After the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, Haiti was a hot topic in American news outlets. Soon after, there was footage released of Haitian migrants attempting to cross the border while border patrol agents on horseback charged at them, whipping them and shouting obscenities. Following this event, Donald Trump went on Fox News announcing old stereotypes about Haitians bringing AIDs to the US. He degraded Haiti similarly to how he did in his 2018 comments from an oval office meeting, when he stated that their country was a “shithole.” Following these comments and events, Haitian migrants were being refused Temporary Protected Status “TPS,” and being deported back to Haiti - the treatment they received was as congresswoman Alexandia Octavio Cortez described, in “stark contrast,” to that of the Ukrainian refugees who were automatically being granted TPS at the time. This thesis analyzes the history of Foreign Relations between the US and Haiti in order to understand the US’s involvement and responsibility for Haiti’s current state. I start with a historical analysis of American Occupation of Haiti in 1914, and continue through the Duvalier dictatorship, NGO involvement in Haiti, up until Haiti’s current political state, in order to give the socio-political context for the image portrayed of Haitians in American news, social media, film, and TV outlets. My thesis contends that racist stereotypes have been used in media and government alike to dehumanize Haitians and justify exploitative foreign policy.

Artificial Intelligence has had a massive burst of growth in the past two years, and will likely impact every job on the market. In my thesis I investigate how AI will affect the creative arts, specifically visual arts, creative writing and film, and why the industry might turn to using AI over human counterparts.

This thesis details the importance and evidence of medieval and modern fantasy’s influence on modern video gaming. This influence is examined through the lens of three primary themes found in fantasy: magic, the bestiary, and chivalry. These themes are traced using medieval texts including The Prose Edda, The Quest for the Holy Grail, and The Death of King Arthur, modern texts including A Wizard of Earthsea, The Eye of the World, and The Way of Kings, and modern video games including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, God of War, and Elden Ring. The reasons why they are so prevalent and useful for developers and companies is a constant question that this thesis seeks to answer with primary attention focused on increasing gameplay length and player immersion as key strategies that allow for advanced monetization. The overall consensus of this thesis is that not only is fantasy an influential genre but that its primary themes lend themselves very well to the format of video games and that game developers and companies are using this to increase their chances of creating successful video games.

This research examines twelfth-century Anglo-Norman literature as social commentary, in support of or as critique of the ruling class, and investigates what Anglo-Norman society considered the most profound responsibilities of kingship. Literature offered a space for courtly poets and chroniclers to critique authority and express concerns about issues in the court. Both R. Howard Bloch (2003) and Albrecht Classen (2008) have examined the political aspect of Marie de France’s lais, relying on the context in John of Salisbury’s political treatise Policraticus. While John’s written views are broadly reflective of his society’s beliefs, he primarily examines the king’s role in promoting religion and justice. This study’s inclusion of three other chronicles written contemporaneously—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain, and Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium—reveals more nuance and breadth in both the Anglo-Norman political realm and twelfth-century ideologies of kingship. By extending prior research, broadening the range of voices included in the conversation, and analyzing multiple chronicles in conjunction with the lais of Marie de France, this research explores what twelfth-century Anglo-Norman society considered the four most critical tenets of kingship: reverence for religious authority, the administration of equitable justice, generosity in sustaining one’s vassals and strangers alike, and respecting the bonds of feudal loyalty.

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.

Vigilantism has existed in the United States since the Revolutionary War. Ever present in popular culture and other media, vigilantes are presently revered for taking the will of the people into their own hands to exact justice as they deem necessary. However, the vigilantes who impose this justice can take many forms, going so far as to act using their own prejudices and claim that it is justice. The Ku Klux Klan did just this, as a Christian white supremacist organization with a history of targeting black individuals in the South on the basis of race alone. The media paints a distinctly different picture, with Batman as one of the most prominent vigilante figures in popular culture. Batman’s narrative is notably based on ideas of contagion in urban landscapes, criminalizing the downtrodden members of society, such as in the 2019 film "Joker." These vigilantes are founded upon the idea of America under siege by the perceived "Other," whether this be based on race, class, or other factors. This thesis serves to explore the themes at play for both the KKK and Batman to better understand the source of these narratives as well as the roles played by these figures in light of the current political landscape, in which we confront race socio-culturally and politically. In this thesis, I discuss the ideas of vigilantism, terrorism, and heroism through the case studies of the Ku Klux Klan and Batman: two entities that act violently outside the law yet are received drastically differently from one another due to their respective senses of morality.

The field of forensic linguistics has burgeoned in the past several decades within a current-day framework of language use, ranging from dialectal analysis to legal language analysis in court cases, to trademark and authorship disputes, and more. When it comes to utilizing forensic linguistics techniques within a historical framework, however, there is still a great deal of research and work to be done. There is a gap in historical research that needs to be filled, to create a more cohesive whole when examining the past for understanding. Pioneers in historical authorship analysis are now using forensic linguistic methods more frequently in their manuscript analyses and research, and the results of those studies indicate that some linguistic variables can be statistically measured with a relative degree of accuracy for historical documents. What is needed now is a forensic analysis which also comprehensively accounts for the challenges regarding various cultures’ definitions of ‘author’ and ‘authorship’ and translation methods in different time periods. For medieval manuscripts, these analyses must also consider the manuscript culture inherent in that time period. In this dissertation, I discuss the rift apparent in the framework of understanding where forensic linguistic analysis and manuscript analysis are not fully meeting in the middle. I address the need for a general methodology that allows academics in both disciplines to work together in finding variables for forensic testing which include the needs of the manuscript culture behind it, so that future research can more fully enrich the understanding of medieval history as a whole. During that discussion, I analyze several completed authorship analyses surrounding the tenth century Old English gloss of the Lindisfarne Gospels, examining the methods utilized by each researcher in accomplishing their chosen research goal. Then, I focus on developing a generalized methodology which can provide a framework for handling unique, individual analyses of medieval manuscripts which have questionable authorship attribution. This framework will help to create a more solid foundation for providing more accurate and effective data for historical authorship cases.

This thesis investigates the description of sensation in the scenes immediately before, during, and following the death of Tristan in variations in the Tristan cycle from the 12th through the 15th centuries. Using a sensory studies approach, the project considers these scenes as they are translated and transmitted from Thomas de Bretagne’s Tristan to the Old Norse Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar and Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd and into Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the last, great medieval treatment of the Tristan story. The scenes are understood in the context of the texts’ sensoria as defined by their cultural and historical contexts and the texts’ underpinning in philosophical and theological thought on the senses. The thesis project argues that the specific cultural preferences and usages of the senses can be made apparent through the comparison of Thomas’s Tristan, the Norse translations, and Malory’s text. Taken together, they show the importance of considering medieval translation when comparing the appearance of the senses in written artefacts from the Middle Ages. The sensory engagement with texts is deeply tied to the making of meaning and ethics in medieval literary works. The differences in how the senses are prioritized and framed suggest a larger variance within European Christian philosophical and theological thought on the senses and provide a potential framework for exploring this phenomenon in other medieval literary cycles.