Recent Submissions

  • Lady Lawyers: How The Good Wife Portrays Females in the Legal System 

    Hammes, Abby (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    This research is an attempt at analyzing the messages that entertainment media sends to the public about female lawyers. Although much research has been done on this topic, it has not been revisited in many years, since ...
  • Writing Back to the Center In Louis Owens’ Wolfsong 

    Markwardt, Kyle (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    Louis Owens, like many other Native American writers, finds himself writing back to the center in his novel, Wolfsong. Owens re-shapes the idea of the Native American by creating a realistic interpretation of Native ...
  • Rise of Zombies in a Post-September 11th Culture 

    Gullickson, Lee (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    This project explores the effect the 9/11 terrorist attacks had on Western culture by looking at zombies in popular culture prior to 9/11 and how the zombie genre has changed to reflect Americans’ fear of another terrorist ...
  • Cultural Interpretations of Agency in Film Adaptations of Macbeth 

    Wagner, Jesse (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    Much of the criticism on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth has focused on the question of agency in the play: What drives Macbeth to commit regicide to gain the throne? Is Macbeth in control of his own actions? The play does ...
  • Fictional Dreaming 

    Rittman, Jacob (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    My project explores the realms of dreams. In-depth research has been conducted upon the topic derived from various schools of thought and also past research studies. Some of the research will come from well-known historical ...
  • Breasts and the West: Breast Size, Bad Girls, and the Japanese Ideal 

    Thieschafer, Jacinta (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    My project is about the role of breasts in anime. Although the popular belief is that anime depicts a cultural obsession with large breasts, after watching years of anime, I noticed that there was a trope: only the bad ...
  • Evolution of Social Media and its Future in Business 

    Spaeth, Bryant (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    This project studies the history and evolution and its move from being solely a social connection tool to a viable business tool. The research will draw primarily from secondary research of different social media sites ...
  • Defying Gravity: Female Creative Writers, Self-Destruction, and Resilience 

    Torgeson, Tessa (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    This project explores the correlation between female creative writers and self-destruction. Self-destruction encompasses a constellation of disorders such as alcoholism, self-harm, mental illness and eating disorders- all ...
  • In Spite of Thunder (or Flight from a Burning Tree): An Exercise in Poetic Recklessness 

    Nelson, Linnea (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    This project is a creative exploration and exercise in the serial poetry genre, grounded in the theories set forth in poet Dean Young’s book The Art of Recklessness. Young’s belief that, “No one knows how to write a poem,” ...
  • Negotiating Fargo: Janteloven, How Fargo of You, and Lived Reality 

    Brazier, Bailey (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    Drawing on cultural studies methodology, both questioning popular perceptions and revealing a more nuanced description of Fargo’s culture, this essay examines layers of social, local, and individual perceptions of the ...
  • Living through Death in Anime 

    Trygstad, Jordan (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    The focus of this project is to analyze how Japanese culture view death through anime. In aid of that goal, the project also provides some background information on traditional Japanese myths as well as the two dominant ...
  • Language Contact and Change: English’s Impact on Subject Personal Pronouns in Spanish 

    Lorenz, Angela (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    In my project, I will analyze at the debate of whether English is affecting the use of the subject personal pronoun in Spanish in the United States. In English, the subject personal pronoun is more or less obligatory—speakers ...
  • How Feminism has Transformed the Character of Morgan le Fay: A Literary and Media Analysis 

    Ruhland, Emilee (North Dakota State University, 2012)
  • Watchmen: Deconstructing the Superhero 

    Rapp, Erica R. (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    Looking at how the characters of Watchmen defy stereotypical superhero characteristics.
  • Unearthing the Fracking Rhetoric: A Burkeian Cluster Analysis 

    Kostecki, Doug (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    This paper looks at the rhetoric utilized in the debate surrounding the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing—a process for removing oil and natural gas from deep within the ground. In order to study the rhetoric ...
  • In a Serious Relationship with my Cell Phone: A Study of Different Perspectives on Mobile Phone Use and Services 

    Knutson, Kelsey (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    Multiple studies have been conducted on mobile phone use and how, why, how much, and in what ways are individuals using them. However, this study discovers how mobile phones are changing the way an individual thinks, ...
  • Career in Blogging 

    Fetch, Chelsea (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    Though a relatively new medium, blogging has transformed substantially in the past few years. What was once simple online journaling now earns some dedicated bloggers a triple figure income. This project aims to explore ...
  • Honeymoon Hitchhikers: Archival Letters to Creative Nonfiction 

    Hauge, Kate (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    This creative nonfiction project is based on the letters written by Mildred La Due Mead to her family during the time that she and her newlywed husband were in California after eloping and leaving Minnesota. The letters, ...
  • The Mascot Effect 2: Social Factors Influencing Pronunciation of Coyote 

    Barta, Kellam (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    The purpose of this project is to build upon previous findings that suggest that a university mascot with varying pronunciations (NDSU Bi/z/on vs. Bi/s/on) contributes to establishing and maintaining a sense of local ...
  • Economic Information is not Scarce: Strategies for Reading the Economist Using Iser’s ‘Implied Reader’ 

    Opgrand, Jeff (North Dakota State University, 2012)
    Like other news magazines, The Economist writes with an editorial bias that is exposed through signal words and prior knowledge it assumes of its readers. The Economist, now more popular in its online form with identical ...