Digital Commons Network^™

Diasporic Strangers In The Mirror: Ever-Evolving Identity And The Immigrant Experience, Meriam Metoui

Theses and Dissertations

This text explores the disparity between immigrant parents and their American born or raised children and show the chasm of misunderstanding between generations navigating different national and cultural contexts found in novels such as The Joy Luck Club, The Namesake, Americanah, and Everything I Never Told You.

Non-Empirical Modelling And Theorizing: Scientific Progress In Particle Physics, Cristin Cain Chall

Theses and Dissertations

Particle physics (and other fundamental physics research, including searches for a theory of quantum gravity) faces a problem when it comes to acquiring experimental evidence. Many theories and models make predictions that cannot be tested with current, or even prospective technology. Yet these fields continue to develop, with new models and theories regularly being introduced, scrutinized, changed, and discarded. My project aims at examining the way theories and models are constructed, adapted, and assessed in fields that lack the empirical evidence that usually grounds such tasks. I will focus on two prominent examples: string theory and attempts to explain electroweak …

Approaches To Teaching Music Reading To Piano Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Rachel Elizabeth Davis

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to collect information about teaching music reading to piano students with Autism Spectrum Disorder and to determine best teaching practices that may be implemented into existing curricula. The study involved interviewing six professionals who are nationally recognized for successfully teaching piano to students with ASD and analyzing the interviews to learn their procedures for teaching music reading to this population.

The interviews contain information concerning the backgrounds of the individuals being interviewed, the demographic backgrounds of students being taught, and the pedagogical process, instructional materials and technology used for teaching music reading in lessons. …

Ghosts Of Derwyddon Research And Approach, Zoya Baker

Theses and Dissertations

This paper describes the theoretical and aesthetic approach to a 35-minute hybrid documentary called Ghosts of Derwyddon about my family’s multi-generational relationship with a small forest on the outskirts of Washington DC. The film combines a variety of elements that form a collage of memory, dreams, and visions of the future.

Thornfield, Wragby, And Their Discontents: Nature And Civilization In Jane Eyre And Lady Chatterley’S Lover, Marianna Alvarado Teuscher

Theses and Dissertations

In Jane Eyre and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Charlotte Brontë and her literary inheritor, D.H. Lawrence, locate the potentially revolutionary romance between their protagonists in natural settings, distant from the social sphere, in order to demonstrate the un-naturalness of an administered capitalist society in which class distinctions work in dehumanizing ways.

"Quiddity | Leaving Home", Jonathan U. Barton

Theses and Dissertations

The poetry collection in four sections features pieces concerned with memory, particularly of the author’s childhood in Ireland. Difficult family relationships as well as early romantic failures are prominent obsessions. Landscapes and careful portraits of characters recur. Travel to Eastern Europe and within the author’s adopted United States give the opportunity to meditate on larger issues and spans of time. Domestic pleasures and the struggle to be a good parent and husband provide the ultimate trajectory of the work.

The nonfiction memoir consists of eight essays which tackle among other topics a failed first marriage, a return visit to the …