Thesis Archives Search
This search engine will let you explore the over 1800 theses written in Honors at The University of Maine since the Program’s inception in 1935. You may search our thesis archives based on any of the fields listed above. If the thesis is available at the Reynolds Library (Thomson Honors Center) or Fogler Library (Special Collections), the information will appear below the bibliographic data. At last count, we had about 1800 theses in the Reynolds Library.
If you have information to add, or if we don’t have your thesis listed in our database, please let us know through our Alumna/us Connection Form.
Search Results
‘SKINS’: A CONTEMPORARY MORAL PANIC
“As We Are” Creating, Directing, and Producing a Jukebox Musical During COVID-19
Major: Communications Graduation Year: 2021 Thesis Advisor: Christopher White
Description of Publication:
From every moment of life there are lessons that can be learned from ourselves and those around us. ‘As We Are’ is a jukebox musical inspired by these lessons. This musical touches upon the power of friendships, self-love, spiritual connection, loss, and mental health topics such as body image, and addiction. ‘As We Are’ takes place in a modern setting accessed through the digital world during COVID-19. The purpose of this creative thesis was to produce a musical that could connect the lives of students during the distance forced by the COVID-19 pandemic. This thesis discusses the trials and tribulations of creating, directing and producing a jukebox musical during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Location of Publication:
URL to Thesis: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/663/
“I Want You the Feel the Fear That I Feel Every Day”: An Analysis of How Climate Change Affects Youth Political Participation
Major: Political Science Graduation Year: 2023 Thesis Advisor: Ryan LaRochelle
Description of Publication:
The purpose of this thesis is to explore the connection between climate change and youth political participation. Using data from a large, cross-national survey done by the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, this project analyzed young people’s emotional responses to climate change. This project synthesized and brought together two threads of scholarly literature in order to make claims about how emotional responses to climate change may be influencing youth political engagement. The line of scholarship explores how emotions traditionally influence political behavior. This research indicated that emotions such as anxiety can have a debilitating effect on people and prevent them from getting involved politically. The second focus of the research was on young people’s relationship to voting, and why they traditionally are not as active as other age groups. This project notes that there is a serious lack of data connecting emotions to youth political behavior. This project’s finding suggests that these forces may be connected in ways that scholars have not fully explored and that future research should analyze this relationship in more detail. The data shows that climate change is a topic young people feel very strongly about. They do not feel heard or represented by their governments when it comes to this matter, which could be a partial explanation for their political inaction. Young people in the U.S. have been more involved in more recent elections than they have been in the past, but it is too early to tell if this will be a long-term, consistent trend. Regardless of this, it is evident that climate change is an important topic for Gen Z, and that emotions may play a more complex role in youth political behavior than previously thought.
Location of Publication:
URL to Thesis: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/834/
“Phone Bad”: A Mixed-Methods Exploratory Case Study Analysis of Social Media and Ostracism
Major: Media Studies & Journalism Graduation Year: 2021 Thesis Advisor: Kathleen L. Ellis
Description of Publication:
Foundational theories of social psychology were written before the existence of social media. As evolving technology has created an environment where users maintain constant social contact, there exists a need for research concerning how human social needs manifest in an online environment, and even moreso for how constant interconnectedness affects people. Previous research indicates a positive correlation between experienced ostracism and social media addiction. However, social media usage tends to be high among users who feel connected, as well as users who feel disconnected, thus indicating that the link between social media and social disconnection may be a ‘chicken-and-the-egg’ situation. This mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative study seeks to identify correlation between ostracism and disordered social media usage, and to illuminate new trends for further exploration. The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique circumstance wherein people have been restricted from public spaces and gatherings for over a year, therefore relying on social media more than ever for interpersonal fulfillment. Quantitative deductive data were collected with a survey utilizing the Social Media Usage Disorder Scale (SMDS) in terms of both before and during the pandemic, and the Ostracism Experience Scale for Adolescents (OES-A). The survey sought to identify whether there was a correlation between experienced ostracism and disordered social media usage among undergraduate students, and whether participants had experienced a change in disordered social media usage before versus during the pandemic. Qualitative, inductive interviews were conducted with ten volunteers from the survey, and analyzed in terms of an exploratory case study examining each individual’s relationship with social media, reasons for usage, and their perception of its effects. Common occurrences between interviews are sorted in the qualitative discussion. The interviews aimed to illuminate new links between lifestyle factors or other predispositions that might affect an individual’s social media usage in a number of ways including: type of platform used, effects of certain platforms, and the individual’s feelings toward their own usage. This study provides implications for further research on the usage of social media and its effects.
Location of Publication:
URL to Thesis: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/690/
“This Winter is Going to Be Awful”: Challenges Facing Maine Domestic Violence Resource Centers Amid COVID-19
Major: Political Science Graduation Year: 2022 Thesis Advisor: Mark D. Brewer
Description of Publication:
Few studies have considered the impact of COVID-19 on the domestic violence workforce in the United States, while none have focused on the state of Maine or the challenges experienced by advocates and organizations as the pandemic becomes endemic. To fill these gaps, this study examines the immediate and enduring impacts of COVID-19 on Maine’s domestic violence workforce using semi-structured interviews analyzed thematically using an inductive coding technique. This study reveals (1) the impact of the pandemic on Maine’s the domestic violence workforce, (2) the ways in which adaptations were made in the provision of services, for better and for worse, and (3) the current challenges faced by these organizations as the pandemic becomes endemic.
Location of Publication:
URL to Thesis: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/777
“But you have to have been there to know what we are talking about”: An Examination of the Rhetorical Environments of Cults and Other Extremist Groups and How They Lead to Violence
Major: Communications Graduation Year: 2021 Thesis Advisor: Nathan Stormer
Description of Publication:
Popular culture often cites charismatic leaders as the catalysts for violent acts in cults and other extremist groups. This explanation is insufficient and oversimplified, and this thesis challenges the idea that a single speech or person can move a large group to act violently and without their own best interests in mind. This thesis examines two well- known cults: The Peoples Temple and Heaven’s Gate, to determine what compelled their followers to commit violent acts 3⁄4 particularly mass suicide. I then take this analysis and look at QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory group, whose participation in the January 6th, 2021 insurrection is explained by my analysis of the cause of cult violence. This thesis explains how Kenneth Burke’s theory of the psychology of form and Jenny Rice’s theory of rhetorical ecologies interact to create a rhetorical environment in which it is almost impossible for members to do anything but act violently—toward themselves or others.
Location of Publication:
URL to Thesis: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/641/
“PERSUADING THE SECRET”: IN SEARCH OF MAINE’S HERMITS
Major: English & Anthropology Graduation Year: 2016 Thesis Advisor: Sarah Harlan-Haughey
Description of Publication:
I have been working on this project for nearly three years now. The journey feels like a long one—with various roads, some yet to be traveled, detours, and dead ends. Largely, it has been a process of trial and error, as I learned to navigate the boundless, at times overwhelming, depths of research—within archives, old newspapers, photographs, poems, fiction, informal conversations and formal interviews—hoping to make some sense of what hermit characters mean to the state of Maine.
Location of Publication: fogler reynolds
URL to Thesis: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/382
“Putting Out Fires”: An Original Situational Comedy Pilot Episode Examining Modern Motherhood
Major: Media Studies Graduation Year: 2020 Thesis Advisor: Jennie Woodard
Description of Publication:
Even in an age of easily accessible and ever-changing digital content, television remains one of the most influential modes of media. Shows, on television and on streaming services, play key roles in informing their audiences of societal conventions. Situational comedies are an easily identifiable genre on television and their popularity has not wavered as seen by their steadfast presence during primetime viewing slots. This thesis explores and analyzes how situational comedies have created spaces for potentially harmful stereotypes for their female characters, specifically mothers. The creative work of this thesis offers an original situational comedy pilot episode that looks to provide an example of a mother character that evades and defies the stereotypes that would be expected of her.
Location of Publication:
URL to Thesis: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/592/
“SIN AZUCAR NO HAY PAIS”: HOW SUGAR AFFECTED CUBAN POLITICS, ECONOMICS, AND SOCIETY FROM 1762-1992
Sugar has been central to Cuba’s political economy for centuries. Both the cultivation of cane and its manufacture into sugar has provided employment and vast revenues to the rural citizenry of this tropical island. This thesis explores the origins and development of this industry through Cuba’s history, focusing on the period between Britain’s occupation of Havana in 1762 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Spain expanded sugar production in the late 18th and 19th centuries by liberalizing trade regulations and providing slave labor to plantation owners. The race and class inequalities of this system erupted into revolution when sugar’s value on world markets dropped during the late 1800s. The United States intervened militarily in Cuba’s fight for independence when it detected a threat to American-held assets. The Cuban Republic was established under the auspices of the Platt Amendment, allowing the United States to shape Cuban politics and economic development to favor its growing share of the supply and demand of Cuba’s cane sugar. The plantations of the 19th century were consolidated by corporations, such that an entire region’s economy might depend on the employment and services offered by one mill company. The State Department’s flexible interpretation of the Platt Amendment sanctioned U.S. intervention in Cuban affairs to maintain the safety of American assets. This created political and social instability during the first half of the 20th century, as autocratic regimes with U.S. backing used repression to maintain stability and power. After the ousting of Batista’s regime, Fidel Castro drastically reformed Cuban agriculture, nationalizing most of the island’s farmland. The Soviet Union (and other socialist countries under its influence) became the Cuban agricultural system’s keystone, buying vast quantities of sugar at advantageous
rates, and providing the machinery, oil, and chemicals necessary to sustain the new communist-organized, modern sugar industry. After decades of growth, the industry came crashing down when the USSR dissolved, taking with it Cuba’s main source of revenue and agricultural inputs. This left Cuba, before an objectively successful country within its region, was brought to the brink of ruin because of this incident and the “Special Period” that followed.