University to award 12 doctorates during Commencement

Pictured: Salve Regina’s 2016 doctoral candidates

Salve Regina will award doctorates in humanities to a dozen candidates during the graduate Commencement ceremony Thursday, May 18. The doctoral program provides an interdisciplinary investigation of the question: “What does it mean to be human in an age of advanced technology?”

The program was developed to integrate philosophical and humane insights into the educational process while addressing current and anticipated technological challenges.

The candidates and their dissertation titles are:

• Ashley Bissonnette: “Pestilences of New England’s First Wars: An Investigation of Colonial Trauma During the Pequot and King Philip’s Wars”
• Thomas Choinski: “Dramaturgy, Wargaming and Technological Innovation in the United States Navy: Four Historical Case Studies”
• Garrett Dell: “Ambivalence Toward Technology in the Poetry of Robert Pinsky”
• Karen Hanson: “The Robot as Other: Sartre and Television Portrayals of Humanoid Robots in Almost Human and Humans”
• Shawn Kalis: “Sensing a Control Problem? Autonomous Unmanned Combat Air Systems and Human Control”
• David Nasca: “The Influence of Technology in Amphibious Warfare and Its Impact on U.S. Geopolitical Strategy From 1898 to 1945”
• James Ricci: “A Monument to Perseverance: The Struggle to Build the Newport Bridge, 1948-1969”
• Sasha Ruggieri: “Social Transformation Through Art: Slow Food Ideology and the Social Protest Novel”
• Emily Stoehrer: “Hollywood Tastemaker: Jeweling the Red Carpet – the Neil Lane Collection, 1995-2010”
• David Vanderbilt: “Thomas Forsyth Torrance and Scientific Theology: An Analysis and Assessment of His Project”
• Catharine Weiss: “Data Mining the Unconscious”
• Michael Xiarhos: “The Connected Pilgrim: The Potential for Transformation in the Social Media Age”