Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

This thesis aims to answer questions about preconquest natives, defined by archaeologists as the Manteño culture (800-1533C.E.), in the cloud forests of Rio Blanco, Ecuador. Descriptions of the excavation units are made focusing on the architectural aspect of their dwelling. The cultural remains of the inhabitants also helped to conclude that this was a domestic house. Using an ethnoarchaeological theory base, modern home building analogies are employed to address questions about the archaeological process.

The Arabian Peninsula was under the influence of the Ottoman Empire from 1517 until its collapse in 1918. During this time, three attempts were made to establish a Saudi state, the last of which began in 1902 and ended with the unification of the third Saudi State in 1932. During this period, three Saudi States were formed. The first Saudi State was established in 1745 when the al-Diriyah Agreement was introduced. This landmark agreement was achieved when Imam Mohammed Ibn Saud formed an alliance with Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahhab, a religious and rebellious man who advocated for the pure interpretation of Islamic principles. This alliance enabled Ibn Saud to govern the state, but he left the religious and cultural aspects of the society under the authority of Ibn Abdul Wahhab. As a result, throughout centuries, the religious establishment has greatly influenced the affairs of all three Saudi States. However, following the seizure of the Grand Mosque by religious zealots in 1979, Saudi Arabia underwent changes that radicalized the religious establishment, causing myriad detrimental effects for Saudi women. Oppressed by the weight of unfair laws and obstacles, Saudi women challenged the status quo and fought for equal rights through various methods. While King Abdullah al-Saud introduced some reforms, more significant change was still to come. After King Abdullah’s death, King Salman and his son Mohammed Bin Salman—the Crown Prince and Prime Minster—initiated a series of sweeping reforms under the Vision 2030 initiative to empower women, diversify the economy, and modernize the Kingdom of Saudi. Some key aspects of these reforms were abolishing the Male Guardianship System and removing the ban on women’s driving.

Artificial intelligence is now a way of life meaning, it is hard to find any type of technology or technological advance that isn’t assisted by or powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. From Siri on our iPhones to our computer tailored Netflix home screens to fast learning computerized and independent floor vacuums AI is everywhere you turn intruding on every aspect of daily functioning. As the pressure of said intrusion increases questions arise about whether all these advances can become crushing to humans. In some instances technology with AI components has been used to replace certain skill sets affecting the availability of employment surround jobs including, cashiers, hotel reception, customer service, taxi drivers, toll booths. And what about graphic design? Can a machine programmed with AI replace the creativity of a human spirit?
The research explores the tension between automated (artificial intelligence + machine learning) and manual, human initiated methods and practices in graphic design…
Can humans be removed from the process of graphic design? Expected outcome: No
How can the case study exploration coupled with the examination of certain considerations including ethical practices, human creativity, quality and originality demonstrate the necessity of human involvement.

Major academic institutions in the United States house unidentified human skeletal remains in their collections as a result of unethical obtainment, poor documentation, and lack of resources. This thesis explores the possible geographic provenances associated with two skulls, A11 and A12, kept in the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Anthropology Department. This thesis utilizes strontium and oxygen isotope analysis collected from dental and enamel tissues to explore possible geographic provenance for A11 and A12.
Analyzing isotopic composition of human skeletal remains is an established method to reconstruct human processes, history, events, and lifeways. Strontium (expressed by the ratio: 87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (expressed by the ratio: δ18O) stable isotope analysis is used to determine place of origin for human remains with unknown origin. Strontium and oxygen isotopes express geographic signatures, of an individual's food and drinking water ingested during childhood which can reflect the isotope signature of the environment (soil, water, geology) from where it originates.

For much of the 20th century, mariners in the United States were able to utilize the radio beacon system to aid in navigation; however, in spite of its importance in U.S. nautical history, there has been very little historical or archaeological research published about the system. The Jupiter Inlet Light Station Radio Beacon Building, located at what is today known as the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse Outstanding Natural Area (JILONA), was part of this coastal network of radio beacons. This thesis involves the methodologies of historical research and terrestrial laser scanning and serves several purposes: to provide JILONA with information about and a digital point cloud of the radio beacon building for future use in a planned museum onsite, to create a much-needed historical narrative of the U.S. radio beacon system, and to aid the Florida Atlantic University Department of Anthropology in future terrestrial laser scanner and modeling efforts. Because the project was undertaken at the request of JILONA, this thesis is to be considered a work of public archaeology.

This thesis exhibition explores how digital culture affects identity and connection through a series of paintings made through collage, mixed media, and reflective surfaces. It looks at how identity is fragmented in the digital age when we construct personas online that are selected and, therefore, less authentic. The paintings juxtapose the use of analog methods with digital imagery, in order to ask about the tension between vulnerability and performance and the authenticity of online interactions. The series is about emotional exhaustion, curated personas, and the search for genuine connection. Reflective elements and textures mounted and layered encourage viewers to engage in a dialectic between themselves and the mediated world, between 'digital self' and the 'authentic self.' The thesis hopes that this work can provoke discourse regarding the ramifications of digital culture on self-perceiving and interpersonal relations in recognizing the human dependence on depth and vulnerability in our fragmented reality.

An interdisciplinary study of the life and work of Jim Harrison. Through the lens of cultural and intellectual history, this dissertation places Harrison within the canon of American literature, from Emerson and Thoreau through Hemingway and Kerouac, and argues that the fundamental thread connecting these writers is their response to industrialization, suburbanization, and consumerism that undermine Americans’ connection to nature and limits an authentic experience with the world. In his novels, novellas, and essays Jim Harrison explores the meaning of the well-lived life, reflecting on the importance of cultivating both a life of the hands and of the mind, of action and contemplation, of nature and literature.

My research centers around French West Indian hip hop music (also called rap) and identity, from its emergence in the 1980s to its evolution in the ensuing years against the backdrop of the Caribbean Francophone literary traditions, as another musical expression of oraliture. By oraliture, we understand a set of unwritten and oral creations representing an era or a community. The dissertation aims to study the appropriation of hip hop music by local artists in the French West Indies (F.W.I.), in particular focusing on the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, because of their geographic, social, political, and cultural settings. Given that these islands have a long-standing tradition of story-telling set to rhythmical patterns, this work analyzes the ways in which ipop Kreyol lyrics highlight the dynamics of the area, paying attention to the aesthetics, the semiotics, and the performance.
Considering hip hop music as part of an oral literature framework allows us to address the questions of identity prevalent in the F.W.I. given their relationship to metropolitan France, the Caribbean, and the U.S.. Caribbean theorists have proposed notions of transculturation, poetics of relation, creolization, and Tout-Monde, among others, to understand fluid identity concepts. The use of Creole in rhythmical patterns found in rap lyrics is at the crossroads of identity building in the F.W.I.. Hip hop music lyrics, a cultural product entrenched in the islands’ oral literary traditions, become a useful means to study the development of a unique French West Indian cultural voice, both on the islands and in the diaspora.

This comparative research identifies and analyzes recurring tropes in the novels Cobra (1972) by Cuban writer Severo Sarduy and La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) by Dominican writer Rita Indiana. Despite the years between the publication of these important Spanish-Caribbean works, they both reveal transformative processes through transgressive writing styles. Seemingly diverse, these novels present a similar plot: a series of violent events that surround the protagonists’ androgyny. Their stories bare a deeper significance as changes to the bodies provoke ruptures that unearth rhizomatic connections with the rest of the surrounding nature, which, of course, has its own histories, different from the ones recorded by humans. Moreover, the novels explore multiplicities and (re)occurrences through times and spaces imperceptibly interconnected. The androgynous rhizomatic trope in contemporary Spanish-Caribbean novels proves to be a significant contribution that leads readers to question biased historical records, conceived to perpetuate coloniality, and dispute heteropatriarchal visions of nature to bring about transcendental changes to the status quo.

This thesis exhibition explores how Iranian women’s narratives might be reshaped for empowerment through the lens of Graphic Design. It challenges gender inequality by analyzing and examining historical and contemporary portrayals of women through case studies. To show women’s strength and resiliency, the thesis imagines an immersive experience that combines Iranian visual culture aesthetics with modern storytelling techniques. It promotes Graphic Design as a tool for social change. It adds to continuing conversations about women’s empowerment, cultural reclamation, and social advancement in Iran and, by extension, globally. The thesis exhibition envisions Graphic Design as a powerful tool for reshaping gender norms in Iranian society. It was inspired by the courage of women in movements such as Woman, Life, Freedom, which started in 2022 in Iran and other countries like Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, which demonstrate their fight for gender equality, self-determination, and the liberation of women from patriarchal and oppressive systems.