Past Master's Projects

The variety of master's projects produced by our students testifies to the interdisciplinary nature of the Duke GLS program.  Some take the form of a traditional master's thesis, but explore issues from a perspective that requires stepping back from disciplinary boundaries or combining the methods of different disciplines.  Others combine traditional academic analysis with other modes and genres -- whether creative, documentary or practical.   Each of them represents the culminating efforts of a student in achieving the MALS degree.  

From 2014-22, a few projects each year were awarded the designation of "Exemplary Master's Project," and marked as such in these records.  Search for the word "exemplary" to find them.  Exemplary projects were highlighted as particularly good models for students contemplating master's projects of their own.  A video showcase featuring some of our 2019-20 winners may be found here.

Starting in 2022-23, all students completing projects are invited to present their work in a public year-end Master's Project Showcase. Projects whose authors choose to present at this event are designated "Showcase Projects."

The Diary of Mary McKeon, an Irish American Domestic Servant in Nineteenth Century America
Summer 2016
Author:
Patricia Ann Pawlak
Supervisor:

What did young, single, unaccompanied Irish women experience when immigrating to the United States in the late nineteenth century? In this final project, I will explore primary and secondary sources that address their experiences, focusing on a diary written in 1883 by a young Irish domestic servant working in New Haven, Connecticut. Mary McKeon, a sixteen-year-old girl from County Leitrim, Ireland, recorded her experiences as a domestic servant for two different families, as well as her own personal thoughts. Mary wrote down her personal experiences, providing a glimpse of what her life was like both inside and outside of her employer’s home. Though much of my research will show that many young women like Mary would be subjected to prejudice and discrimination due to their lack of understanding middle-class American values, which would give rise to the “Bridget” stereotype of a brutish, ill-mannered and incompetent domestic servant, not all Irish women experienced that discrimination and prejudice. Mary is one example of a domestic servant that was treated kindly by her employers and her story documents a more positive and supportive environment for this newly arrived young, single immigrant. Her diary also reveals her to be a young woman who worked to improve her language skills and her situation. And, through her diary, we get a glimpse of her strategies for ensuring an active social life, including access to courtship and marriage. By analyzing Mary’s diary and sharing my results in this final project, I hope to provide a more comprehensive view into the lives of these young women.

Fluidity in Women's Sexuality
Summer 2016
Author:
Karli N. Johonnot
Supervisor:

Sexual fluidity has been proposed as a key component of women’s sexuality. However, not all women acknowledge or experience fluidity in their sexual attractions and behaviors. Because this is the case, what proportion of women are experiencing sexual fluidity? Research has concluded that a “sizeable minority” of women are experiencing sexual fluidity, with the highest levels found among those that identify as a sexual minority. Furthermore, certain individual differences have been found to be associated with a heightened (or weakened) likelihood of experiencing or embracing sexual fluidity. Through extensive literature reviews on women’s sexuality and sexual fluidity, it has been concluded that sexual orientation identity status, as well as psychological, biological, and social factors, all play roles in the expression or degree of sexual fluidity experienced. This means that certain personal and environmental factors have the ability to both hinder and/or nurture fluidity in a woman’s sexual attractions, behaviors, and experiences. Accepting that women’s sexuality is fluid and teaching about the variability sometimes observed in women’s sexuality allows us to not only see that experiencing same-sex attractions, desires, or experiences is not necessarily abnormal, but also that it may be more common than originally assumed, which has the potential to reduce societal stigma associated with homosexuality.

Understanding Suicidal Behavior Among Latin Adolescent Girls Living in the United States
September 2016
Author:
Estefania Ramirez Diaz Lombardo
Supervisor:

Suicide in adolescents between the age of 10 and 24 years old is the second cause of death in the United States. This rate differentiates by ethnic and racial groups within the same country; Latino/Hispanic adolescent girls have the highest rate of suicide behavior. Considering that Latino/Hispanic is the fastest growing minority group in the nation, with an expected population of 30% by 2060, this issue should be a public health priority. This paper answers the following question: what are the conditions operating among Latin adolescent girls living in the United States that cause significantly higher suicidal behavior rates in the U.S. and compared with their peers in Latin American countries? And, how adequate are treatments such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and prevention programs in tackling the specific risk factors affecting this population? The paper is divided into five chapters; the first four are based on a comprehensive literature review of statistics of suicide, risk and protective factors, treatment, and prevention programs. The last chapter offers an analysis of the sociological phenomenon of suicidal behavior in this population and three brief narratives of attempters and non-attempters. Studies show that subjective distress, familism and immigration issues are the key risk factors of suicidal behavior in Latina adolescent girls. Understanding the risk factors is key in order to design promotion and prevention programs that are culturally relevant and that can have a positive impact in the reduction of this alarming phenomenon.

An Amorous Prehistory of Hong Kong Queer Cinema
September 2016
Author:
Manjun Zhao
Supervisor:

Depiction of homoerotic relationships among women in commercial costumed films was a unique phenomenon in 1970s - 1980s Hong Kong cinema. What are the possible cinematic meanings of lesbian images that we can perceive in these films? How should we evaluate the exact representation of a sexuality that had been perceived as deviant in that society? In this essay, I close-read homoerotic scenes and trace through the trajectories of cultural and industrial changes enabling the emergence of two representative films: Intimate Confessions of A Chinese Courtesan (1972) and An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty (1984). I do this with a continuous concern for historical context in order to provide an in-depth understanding of how lesbian images are constructed in cinema.

Compensatory Education: Approaching the Problem from the Wrong Direction
May 2016
Author:
Francesca Taylor Prince
Supervisor:

*Designated as an exemplary master's project for 2015-16*

The American approach to disparities in educational achievement is deficit focused and based on false assumptions of equal educational opportunity and social mobility. The labels attached to children served by compensatory early childhood education programs have evolved, e.g., from “culturally deprived” into “at-risk” for school failure, yet remain rooted in deficit discourses and ideology. Drawing on multiple bodies of literature, this thesis analyzes the rhetoric of compensatory education as viewed through the conceptual lens of the deficit thinking paradigm, in which school failure is attributed to perceived genetic, cultural, or environmental deficiencies, rather than institutional and societal inequalities. With a focus on the evolution of deficit thinking, the thesis begins with late 19th century U.S. early childhood education as it set the stage for more than a century of compensatory education responses to the needs of children, inadequacies of immigrant and minority families, and threats to national security. Key educational research and publications on genetic-, cultural-, and environmental-deficits are aligned with trends in achievement gaps and compensatory education initiatives, beginning mid-20th century following the Brown vs Board declaration of 1954 and continuing to the present. This analysis then highlights patterns in the oppression, segregation, and disenfranchisement experienced by low-income and minority students, largely ignored within the mainstream compensatory education discourse. This thesis concludes with a heterodox analysis of how the deficit thinking paradigm is dependent on assumptions of equal educational opportunity and social mobility, which helps perpetuate the cycle of school failure amid larger social injustices.

An Education of Feelings: Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and the Art of Fiction
May 2015
Author:
Bing Zhu
Supervisor:

*Designated as an Exemplary Final Project for 2014-15*

In my thesis I set out to discover and interpret Thomas Hardy’s views on the art of fiction. I focus specifically on three literary essays written by Hardy during the late 1880s and the early 1890s and corroborate my conceptual analysis of these essays by researching their historical context, which further illuminates my understanding of the essays’ significance. The historical context includes the widespread censorship of fiction from vigilant Victorian publishers and circulating libraries, and the fashionable discussion of French realist novels. Finally I use Tess of the d’Urbervilles to demonstrate how the novel embodies Hardy’s artistic vision. I hope such discussion of the novel will enhance the reader’s appreciation of it according to Hardy’s understanding of the benefits of fiction reading. I show that the fastidious Victorian preoccupation with morality and propriety blinded the critics to Hardy’s ability of rendering with force and sincerity human emotional delights and sufferings. Unlike the French realist authors, who were devoted to the objective explanation of human behavior, Hardy believed that the unique persuasive power of fiction resides in its appeal to the reader’s intuitive conviction. However, there is a fundamental difference between sentimental novels and Hardy’s conception of great fiction. The latter’s claim of superiority lies in the author’s sincere and personal engagement with the concrete and tangible details of real life.

The Intellectuals in Northern China and The Abolition of the Civil Service Examinations: Minds and Identities
May 2015
Author:
Shiyi Xiang
Supervisor:

In order to understand the impact of the abolition of the civil service examinations, I examine the lives of Chinese intellectuals during 1895-1910. I investigate their behaviors, emotions, and living environment, and explore how intellectuals retained positions in society through various channels and compare different patterns of their psychological change. What I discover is that stratification among local elites promoted them to discover their new identities in the transition from the Qing dynasty to the Republican government: they were trying to become pure intellectuals or scholar-officials before the dramatic changes of the civil service examinations; however, during the republican times, they would explore their new life path and gradually shape their unique understanding of modernization.

An Analysis of the Potential Democratizing Effects of Social Media: A Chinese Experience
May 2015
Author:
Danqi Wu
Supervisor:

This paper analyzes the democratizing potential of Chinese social media. The Chinese government’s media restriction always lies at the key core of international criticism. The rise of Chinese social media, and citizen journalism in particular, has been regarded as the key battleground for China’s future. However, the democratizing potential of Chinese social media in general and citizen journalism in particular stand in need of investigation in China’s unique context. The same holds true for the cross-cultural applicability of a Western-style democratic path in the Chinese context. This paper analyzes China’s current socioeconomic reality and ideological shifts, and agrees that these changes qualify China as a more liberal society. However, this study also suggests that collective traditions in Chinese society are still strong at both grassroots and authoritative levels. Therefore, it is mistaken to assume that China has been ideologically prepared for undertaking a reform at a structural level. In a similar vein, although Chinese social media, and citizen journalism in particular, is on the rise, demonstrating the power of breaking down both the technological and ideological barriers for deepening China’s political transformation, its contribution to the dawn of democracy is not nearly as much as we have wished for. Over-anticipation, over-reliance and over-interference by the Chinese government may undermine its democratizing potential as a transformative tool and finally result in reversing the process of its growth and development.

The City Has Changed Them: Storytelling, Memory, and the Family Photo Album
May 2015
Author:
Erica Woods Tucker

The City has Changed Them: Storytelling, Memory, and the Family Photo Album is an interdisciplinary work that consists of five parts. Four of the parts have an analytical component as well as a personal story to accompany them. Along with the writings there are also seventeen images from one of my family’s photo albums. The purpose of the project is to locate a family through memoir and photos, and trace them through the American phenomenon known as the Great Migration. I used my maternal grandmother, Malqueen Goldsmith, and my father, James Woods, as anchors to the memoir pieces. I outline their departure from the south, their subsequent relocation to New York City, their search for work, interactions within their own communities and the larger social context in which they lived and raised a family from the mid-1940s to roughly 1975. The purpose of the project is for the researcher to view the African American family photo album as a serious historical object. I believe it to be an historical artifact as well as a visual record that warrants the same serious study as traditional historical objects.

Are Older Adults Ready for Wireless Physical Activity Tracking Devices? A Usability Quality Improvement Project
May 2015
Author:
Francesca L. Tocci
Supervisor:

Background: Physical activity tracking devices (PA-TDs) are becoming increasingly popular but their use among older adults is unknown. Objectives: We present results of a quality improvement project on wearable physical activity tracking devices (PA-TDs) examining the acceptability of PA-TDs to remotely monitor activity. Methods: 30 of 63 participating Veterans, ages 65-91 had a smart phone; 7 compared 4 PA-TDs for 2-7 days. One in-person session was needed to introduce each device. Results: Average daily step counts were low for this group, ranging from 800-5,000 steps. Monitored activity revealed patterns of increased activity, from 4682 to 6159 steps, when using the device. Conclusions: Barriers and positive aspects to widespread use of PA-TDs are highlighted and need further investigation.

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