A linked collection featuring a young gay man -- the son of a black mother and a Mexican father -- coming of age in contemporary Houston.

This study explores the construction of the Indonesian Presidential candidates’ image during the 2014 presidential election from the perspective of Facebook users. I analyzed Facebook users’ comments derived from one of the candidate’s Facebook pages, Prabowo Subianto, by employing a thematic analysis to examine an official posting’s comments on June 19, 2014 where a group of celebrities supported Prabawo Subianto. Comments were extracted from June 20, 2014 to July 8, 2014, which was 20 days before election day. Results indicated that the construction of a candidate’s image involved the relationship between the perceived attributes of the candidate and national identity; the relationship between the candidate and his supporters; the perceived personality traits of the candidate, and the ability of supporters to identify with the candidates on a personal level. Moreover, there were also inferences related to political scandals, their treatment by other politicians, spiritual values, and the future state of the country. The study also showed how users tried to make sense of their political world by simplifying the complexity of a candidate through the use of particular themes.

Other Nature Other nature is a long term, ongoing documentary project that explores the relationship between humans and the natural environment of the Mojave Desert. Predicated on the reduction of the Joshua Tree woodlands that surround my home of Hesperia, Other Nature examines and questions the practices used in the creation of the built environments that are replacing the Mojave’s endemic terrain. Through various techniques, I document and record the systematic removal of the Mojave’s natural presence. Photography, eco-printing and paper making all offer a cathartic approach to witnessing the loss of these natural spaces. Included in my work is an aspect of gathering and reclaiming removed plant material to commemorate the beauty of and offer a voice to a habitat that is being forever changed. Fred Brashear Jr.

The thesis discusses twelve paintings completed during the period of study from October of 1974 to November of 1976 and presented at the Art and Architecture Gallery, November 8, 1976 - November 26, 1976.

Blood Riveris an exploration of lineage and blood connection as families are made and remade over generations. The poems rise from the physical body, from birth, and again from death. The lyric is used as a mode of investigation as she writes to discover what it means to become a mother, what it means to be a daughter and wife, and finally what it means to remake the self in order to embody all that we are. The poems are born from the heart and explore the connections between us all.

A Collection of Stories includes a novel excerpt, two non-fiction pieces, and a short story. The novel is the story of a young woman, Amina, who returns home after the death of her father. There she will confront members of her family about various secrets and acts of indiscretion. Amina keeps secrets herself, as she hid her lovers from her current husband. Writing is aphoristic and poet. One non-fiction essay is an examination of the effects of building design on the human psyche. The other is a postpartum journey through womanhood, as the speaker decides which parts of her past to reveal to her new daughter. The short story is about a sarcastic, young girl with Daddy issues.

The Break is a personal investigation into problems and possibilities of representing my specific transgender identity. Trans as a tactic to speak about a state of forever becoming, forever in between, outside of and in opposition to dominant social norms of being. Trans as a model for a different way of viewing and being in the world. Can we form a different kind of horizontal shared power though a collective refusal to play into existing structures from which we have been excluded? What are the potentials for modeling other ways of being, other ways of (dis)engaging, other ways to be in the world? What if we can disengage words from their established meanings? Can we re-see each other without the language that upholds the social conditions that maintain internalized categories? Can we collectively create the conditions to imagine the possibility of building other worlds in this world?

This thesis examines how the sociopolitical contexts of the mid-twentieth century influenced readers’ interpretations of Mark Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” two controversial novels that were subjected to censorship activity. In particular, this thesis will focus on the reception of both of these novels during the 1950s and 1960s, a period marked by two major events: The Civil Rights Movement and the youth counterculture phenomenon. In this study, the reception of “Huckleberry Finn” will be analyzed in the context of the civil rights movement, using news articles published in the 1950s and 1960s to illustrate how the different interpretations of readers prompted school board directors to ban the book from junior high and high school reading lists.

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This thesis highlights the fact that the way Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost understood nature informed their work as writers. The underlying theme through each chapter is how epistemology about the natural world is created. It compares two seemingly opposed approaches to knowledge construction about nature, answering the question: Is knowledge and value about nature socially constructed or inherently existent and discovered. The second chapter emphasizes that Dickinson considered knowledge based in nature to be socially constructed, making the subjugation of the nineteenth-century woman one of her central subjects. The third chapter shows how Frost agreed with social constructivism in that knowledge is the product of imaginative involvement; he used a constructive stance to emphasize humanity's important role in compelling nature to reveal spiritual truths, which made the reciprocal relationship between people and their environments central to his work. The concluding chapter synthesizes these two approaches and suggests that both are necessary in our modern day understanding of nature.