This creative project examines Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Disney’s Frozen, focusing on how women are portrayed and treated. I use feminist literature as a lens to analyze both movies in the “Artist Piece” section. I believe it is important to scrutinize the way female characters are depicted because these movies are presented to children as idealized fairy tales. After critiquing both movies, I include a feminist retelling of Beauty and the Beast and Frozen. I use feminist literature to retell these fairy tales with empowered female depictions.

This memoir will be delivered in parts, beginning with the statistical data behind addiction, followed by memories of my life that exacerbated my alcohol use disorder. A painted picture of my existence will lead into the final part of gathered resources to help yourself or others who may struggle with addiction. I plan to bring insight and education from an addict's point of view. I feel exposed as I write and peel back the deepest layers of what has consumed me for many years. Bringing my inner self to the light is helping me gain confidence in my sobriety. This being said, I am not special. I am not the first student to suffer from addiction and I, unfortunately, will not be the last. My hope is that you, or others in your life, through my story, can gain the confidence that you need to achieve control of the life you always wanted to live. Even though you have an addiction, addiction does not have you, as more than 23 million United States adults struggle with addiction to drugs or alcohol.

The influx of readily available sports data has transformed the landscape of recruitment analysis conducted in European soccer leagues. Clubs now have access to a repository of information that helps to monitor the status of current players and filter those they wish to recruit. Supplemented by extensive financial backing, the teams in the English Premier League have shifted from a local, more traditional approach to a focus on the acquisition of players in international markets. This paper analyzes the rapid effects of implementing a data-driven approach to recruitment and argues that the dominance of Liverpool in the EPL from 2017 to 2022 has stemmed from a superior focus in this data-driven recruitment compared to other clubs in the league, specifically Manchester United. Other teams have recently shifted their structures to model the modern, fast flow of data that the two European super clubs manage each season yet consistently fail to match either. Furthermore, this project establishes the feasible prospect of clubs prioritizing their staffing for data over other departments, including players.

This quasi-experimental, concurrent, mixed method, action research study sought to evaluate how an elective 1-credit course informed by mindfulness and culturally sustaining pedagogy influenced honors students’ academic self-efficacy, self-compassion, and their meaning-making about what it means to be an honors student. Theoretical perspectives and research guiding the study included: academic self-efficacy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, mindfulness, and third space. Drawing from these perspectives, the 9-week Creative Compassion course utilized poetry and rap as a way to enact culturally sustaining pedagogy and also as a vehicle for students to practice mindfulness. Findings from quantitative data from pre- and post- surveys of a treatment and control population, as well as qualitative data (open-ended survey questions, focus groups, and student artifacts) from the treatment population are presented here. This study revealed the following: practices informed by culturally sustaining pedagogy positively impacted students’ mindfulness, these same practices allowed for the creation of a third space within the classroom, and improving student self-compassion should be an increased priority. Additional implications for research and practice are also presented.

Every day we pass people without thinking everyone has a story. If an individual looks “normal,” any struggles faced living with an invisible disability are left without words or thoughts due to the dominant norm—ableism. Conversely, a more visible disability may not be dismissed as quickly. Who are unseen, ignored, and misunderstood are those who live with invisible disabilities not only in a dominant able-bodied society, but also within academic scholarship as well, because they do not fit into the dominant definition of disability. In turn, binaries form between power relations and within knowledge production that create exclusion. This thesis is an intersectional analysis on expanding the definition of disability, specifically invisible disability, in order to deconstruct, challenge, and transform the hegemonic conceptualization of disability and break binaries in order to give voice to ignored and misunderstood narratives of invisible disabilities as well as foster and create nuanced understanding within knowledge production and power itself. I particularly use an autoethnographic approach to conduct this analysis of my own everyday, lived experience as a young, mixed race woman living with an invisible disability, or chronic illness, on how ableism operates in the medical sphere and at the academy, further exploring what it means to be a “good” or “bad” chronic illness patient and categorized and labeled by the stigmas attached to the definition of disability.

The culture surrounding death in America is one of science and silence. When possible, death is hidden away from the public view. When exposure to death is unavoidable, it is sensationalized, made into a spectacle. Our dying are put into hospice care, nursing homes, and other hidden spaces, or else they are plastered over the news and internet. So, we get one of two views of death: the sterile, silent death that happens in the presence of medical professionals or the bloody, tragic deaths that are constantly reported across news outlets and social media or sensationalized on entertainment platforms such as movies and video games. Entire genres of television and movies are created on the foundation of bloody deaths and we are exposed to the concept of death constantly.

Despite the consistent coverage of death on a large scale, the average person is not often exposed to death on a personal level in this day and age. The deaths we see on television or in the movies are not typically connected to people with whom we are attached and so we are not required to work through our emotional response and experience. We are afforded the space to be a casual observer in most of the deaths that we see—we do not need the emotional and mental tools to cope with death on a personal level. While this distance from death may be true of the American whole, it is not entirely generalizable. Professionals in select fields are required to deal with death on a much more regular basis than the average person, including, but not limited to, healthcare and forensic professionals. In these professions, death is a fundamental aspect of the job—either as an expected risk or a necessary precursor. These professionals deal intimately with death, its causes, and its effects on a regular basis because of their chose line of work and, in doing so, are regularly exposed to death and other trauma which has the potential to affect them on both a professional and personal level. In doing so, these professionals are required to, as scientists, analyze and record these experiences with death through the lens of objectivity. These professionals are expected to maintain a professional distance while also being required to give an empathetic response to other’s trauma. The potential effect of this secondary trauma on these professionals is only sharpened by the culture of machismo in these science-based fields that prevents many professionals from expressing emotions regarding their job and getting the social support they need from others within their community.

The image of La Virgen de Guadalupe is an iconic symbol for many in the Catholic Religion and those with Mexicana/ indigenous roots. Her image has played a vital role in the personal and religious agency of Latina women raised Catholic. The image of La Virgen de Guadalupe sets up many expectations of what a woman in my culture should grow up to be. Purity, chastity, and motherhood are tied into the story of La Virgen. All words that prevent self-identity and self-pleasure. However, moving away from the characteristics that are constructed by those in power she has become much more. Through words and language we retell the story of La Virgen de Guadalupe and give her the capacity to become a symbol of hope and courage. This reclamation offers women the power to express self-identity and pleasure and allows us the ability to see La Virgen as women. Following writers such as Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Carol Gilligan and others, I have created a creative project with the image of La Virgen de Guadalupe and words that are associated with La Virgen. Some of these words will lead to La Virgen and some will block however we still must work with them to get to La Virgen that will correspond with our soul. The words came from my own personal thought and from my writing. In addition, some words are borrowed from the authors that helped in my writing. I hope my creative project will give the capacity to think beyond the ideas that restrict us from true self identity and pleasure for Latina Women.

Four hundred years after the word "virtuous," came to be associated with a woman's sexuality, today's female adolescent seemingly has everything. Yet, there is a psychological civil war raging in the psyche of the 21st century young American female because her mind is divided against itself due to the conflicting instructions of who and what she should be. She has so many choices; it is easy to become overwhelmed by them. Today's female youth is threatened. She communicates more and more, but her ability to express herself is inhibited because she is unsure of how to develop an authentic sense of self. It is a hermeneutic understanding of communication and what it means to be "virtuous" that can free young women to cultivate authentic self and continue to make decisions that support such a lifestyle. It is the aim of this thesis to reclaim the word "virtuous" for the benefit of today's young women. Deeper understanding of hermeneutics and communication allow us to view this word in a different light and read the entirety of Proverbs 31 as feminists. Young women have always faced challenges in adolescence, but a return to classical wisdom and philosophy will equip them to further advance themselves and their communities, rather than forcing them into a life of speaking tongue twisters. The virtuous young woman does not know what the future holds, but armed with the lessons of tradition and the fire of hope, she may speak a virtuous magic over the world with a tongue fit for the challenge.