John Cabot University ScholarShip
ScholarShip is the digital repository at John Cabot University. It provides an online space designed to archive, organize, preserve, and make accessible the digital scholarship faculty and students produce, showcasing the accomplishments of the University’s scholarly community.
Featured Items
Recent Submissions
Item From Culture to Commodity: The History of the Indie Rock Genre(2025)Over the several decades, the music genre of indie rock has transformed from its scene-based subcultural roots into a genre that uses aesthetics and fluidity with other genres in the digital age. This thesis looks at the evolution of indie rock, where we look at the history and influence of both punk and grunge—two important subcultures whose D.I.Y. ethics and alternative mindsets helped define the early indie rock identity. By using subcultural theory, particularly through the work of Dick Hebdige and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, this thesis examines how early indie rock thrived due to the reliance of alternative music subcultures and their resistance through music, style, and community. However, as indie rock moved into the 2000s and today, these subcultural qualities would fade due to the genre’s reliance on forward experimentation, focus on aesthetics, the creation of the internet and streaming services, and a new emphasis on individuality. This would lead to understanding post-subcultural theory, where this thesis explores how indie rock evolved from a set genre into a more vague and aestheticized mood—defined as much by social, fashion choices, playlist culture, and an emotional resonance. Throughout the genre’s history, indie rock blooms out of its subcultural roots while managing to have its rebellious and alternative soul.Item Francesco Hayez’s Meditazione: Inventing Italian Identity?(2025)Nominated Professor of Painting at the Brera Academy in 1850, Francesco Hayez (Venice, 1791 – Milan, 1882) is commemorated today as the first painter of unified Italy. Defined by contemporaries as the artist who “made Italians,” he promoted ideals of national identity in a historical period when the country was fragmented socio-politically and under foreign rule. Praised by the Italian activist Giuseppe Mazzini as the “democratic genius” and protagonist of Italian Romanticism during the Risorgimento, Hayez used history painting and portraiture to create a new imagery that filtered the glorious events of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance through modern values. Among his copious allegorical portraits, mainly produced during the 1840s and 1850s, his most famous is the second version of "Meditazione", dated to 1851. Following the first version of 1850, and closely related to his "Malinconia" (1840–41) and "Un pensiero malinconico" (1842), the second "Meditazione" portrays a seated semi-nude young woman as the allegory of Italy after the failed First War of Independence (1848–49). The new Risorgimento history movement of the 1990s and 2000s led to a revision of this complex period by numerous academics, including Alberto Mario Banti, Paul Ginsborg, John Foot, Adrian Lyttelton, Silvana Patriarca, and Lucy Riall. However, the active role that art played in shaping the history of the Risorgimento has been overlooked, and a reconsideration of the icons of the nation is yet to be treated. Hence, through a hybrid methodological approach that combines visual and contextual analyses with memory and museum studies, this thesis’ aim is to fill a gap in the study of Italian unification. In the first half of this thesis, the function of Hayez’s second "Meditazione" as an icon of pre-unified Italy is closely examined in relation to the concepts of "italianità" [Italianness] and "piccola e grande patria" [small and great fatherland]. This distinction between regional and national identity—which Mazzini’s idea of the nation-state tries to bridge—raises the 2 question of how to construct an image of Italy that is able to shape collective memory when the country is still marked by a strong political, social, economic, and cultural divide between the North and the South. Furthermore, issues including the role of patronage, political censorship, the building of foreign and regional Italian stereotypes, and religious imagery—at a time when the Catholic Church had become an obstacle to Italian unification—are closely examined. The second half of this thesis seeks to study how the Risorgimento is treated today in Italy, by analyzing the function and reception of Hayez’s work from 1938 to present, as part of the permanent collection of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti in Verona. By referencing his portraits for the Habsburg Empire, we raise questions regarding the treatment of Hayez’s patriotic engagement during the Risorgimento. Through these inquiries, we suggest that he was mythically elevated to painter of the national cause by Mazzini and his followers, who were trying to invent and establish the image of a unified Italy. Therefore, this research has a trifold objective: to apply the recent advancements in Risorgimento historiography to the study of "Meditazione"; to analyze how "Meditazione" functions as a "lieu de mémoire" for regional and national identity; and, ultimately, to examine how "Meditazione" is displayed and continues to serve as the most iconic image and personification of the nation. In order to do so, primary sources—including Hayez’s "Le Mie Memorie" and local periodicals—are studied in relation to secondary sources such as catalog raisonnés, recent exhibition catalogs on the Risorgimento, monographic exhibitions about Hayez, and new Risorgimento histories.Item Luxury Apparel and “Made in China”: A Case Study Comparing Sustainable Production in Italy and China(2025)This study explores the intersection of sustainability, transparency, and outsourcing in the luxury fashion industry, with a comparative focus on Italy and China. By examining the environmental, ethical, and branding implications of production strategies employed by leading luxury brands, the research highlights the challenges of maintaining exclusivity while adhering to sustainable practices. Drawing on case studies, industry reports, and regulatory analysis, the study investigates how outsourcing production to emerging markets affects brand reputation, stakeholder trust, and consumer behavior in the international luxury apparel sector. The findings indicate that while Italy remains synonymous with quality craftsmanship, increasing outsourcing to China—often accompanied by insufficient transparency—risks undermining sustainability claims and eroding consumer trust. The paper concludes with policy and branding recommendations for luxury firms seeking to align their supply chains with authentic sustainability principles in both developed and developing markets.Item Hybrid Warfare and International Law: a Legal Analysis of the Conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine(2025)This study examines Russia’s employment of hybrid warfare against Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2022 through a legal lens, with the objective of understanding how international law has been manipulated, or made ineffective by hybrid tactics. Hybrid warfare, understood as the strategic combination of conventional military force with cyber operations, legal manipulation, and disinformation, presents significant challenges to the enforcement of international law. This research utilizes a comparative legal analysis, relying on sources including the UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, and documents from NATO. Findings reveal that in both conflicts, Russia used digital aggression and ambiguous military tactics to avoid legal accountability while pursuing territorial and strategic gains. The study highlights the weaknesses in international legal enforcement and institutional response, and recommends reforms to codify hybrid warfare in international law, develop standards for cyber operations, and increase legal protections against non-military aggression. The case studies of Georgia and Ukraine demonstrate the urgent need for international law to evolve in order to effectively respond to hybrid threats and protect state sovereignty.Item Constructing Roles in the Early Modern Novel: Contrasting Views on Women and Female Virtue in Richardson’s Pamela and Haywood’s Fantomina(2025)This thesis investigates eighteenth-century novels and their role in shaping social expectations on women, particularly regarding the preservation of premarital chastity, which was widely considered a marker of moral excellence. To contextualize this analysis, primary sources such as conduct books are examined to illuminate the moral framework of the time, providing deeper insight into the cultural significance of the novels under consideration. The thesis also adopts a combined lens of New Historicism and feminist literary criticism to explore the construction of gender, the performative nature of femininity, and broader social concerns of the period. The core of the analysis focuses on two novels: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina. While Richardson reinforces the period’s moral expectations and endorses societal pressures placed upon women, Haywood subverts and challenges them. Both novels are examined through the authors’ use of metatextual elements, characterization of their heroines, and the outcomes or rewards each heroine receives. Read in contrast, these texts reveal a more complex portrayal of eighteenth-century femininity, exposing the tensions between conformity and resistance. Furthermore, this comparison offers a reflection on contemporary understandings of gender roles and highlights literature’s enduring capacity not only to mirror societal norms but also to actively shape and challenge them.
Communities in JCU ScholarShip
Select a community to browse its collections.