Digital Commons Network^™

Brrap Brrap Pew Pew: Representations Of Abortion In Adult Animated Television Comedy, Erika A. Byrnison

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis documents and analyzes representation of abortion in American adult animated comedy, charging that it is under-examined and significant because representation on television in other genres has traditionally been absent or misleading. It covers theories on how pop culture communicates social norms, and posits that greater truthful representation of abortion in popular culture may be effective in reducing prevalent abortion stigma in the U.S. amongst the young by normalizing and more accurately representing the procedure. It reviews why our culture should be concerned about reducing abortion stigma in the U.S. It also identifies the “taboo ratings paradox,” wherein television …

The Post-9/11 Lgbtq Human Rights Struggle In Egypt, Donna K. Huaman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the struggle for LGBTQ human rights has become a leading standard that depicts whether or not a state can be considered modern and progressive. Yet, while this new criterion seems to be supported by Global North states, other nations in other regions, like Egypt from the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) has criticized the international pressure to implement this standard as neo-imperialist and inauthentic to its Muslim-Arab culture. Egypt claims to be the universal Arab-Muslim voice for the MENA region and has become one of the greatest challengers to the international campaign for …

Shared Deliberations: Learning From The Voices Of Social Justice Lawyers On Their Aspirations, Challenges And Roles, Ian Head

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lawyers in the U.S. who attempt to advocate for social justice issues, often on behalf of those communities most targeted by government institutions and oppressive legal systems, have unique perspectives into the challenges of using the law to create transformative change. This thesis examines the voices of over a dozen attorneys fighting not only on behalf of their clients, but also wrestling with how to best use a set of legal tools not meant for dismantling systems of power. Listening to how these legal advocates navigate their roles inside a system of laws created to consolidate rather than distribute power …

Finding The Public: Models Of Interaction Between Curatorial And Education Departments In Three American Encyclopedic Museums, Liam Sweeney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Curatorial and education departments have coexisted for the last half century in American art museums, and have often had differing attitudes about who the museum is for and how best to convey the current and historical meaning of the works they display. This results from trends and transformations in the field, which have recently yielded an increased attention on broadening the definition of the public that the museum serves. This thesis examines interactions between curatorial and education departments in three encyclopedic art museums across the United States, in order to better understand how meaningful collaboration can be fostered between these …

Refracting Immigration Rhetoric: The Struggle To Define Identity, Place And Nation In Southern Arizona, Emily Duwel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the refraction of immigration rhetoric in a local context through a collection of letters to the editor of southern Arizona’s largest and only daily newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, for the period 2006-2010. The purpose is to further insight into the process by which xenophobic nationalism is both contested and legitimated ‘on the ground,’ within a violent paradigm of nativist rhetoric and exclusion. Findings reveal essential disjunctures between and within letter-writers’ conceptions of moral proximity and the social contract—as delimiting those obligations and expectations that inhere between society, the self and the stranger—as well as competing notions …

Refugees From Somalia, Burma/Myanmar And Iraq: Navigating New Lives In The Us In Post-9/11 Context, Ivona Boroje

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis engages with the relationship of the US with refugees, with a focus on the reception and perception of refugees resettled in the US after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Three groups that have resettled in the US in large numbers after 9/11, namely refugees from Somalia, Burma/Myanmar and Iraq groups have had divergent experiences, shaped by factors such as race and/or ethnic identity, religion, cultural norms, expectations about life in the US, histories of their places of origin and the relationship of the US with that place of origin. This thesis attempts to compare the experiences …

Development, Expertise, And Infrastructure Between The Ohio River And Cincinnati Riverfront, 1895-Present, Raymond W. Pettit

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As the first major U.S. urban center located west of the Appalachian Mountains, Cincinnati’s early growth depended on the Ohio River, a vital route for the westward drive of U.S. settler colonialism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Over time, with the expansion of railroads and shifting trade routes, the river became less relevant to the success of the city. In this dissertation study, I pick up the history of Cincinnati’s relationship with the Ohio River after it had apparently declined in importance. Through a focus on how Cincinnati elites have advocated for different infrastructural projects along the …

Challenges In Measuring Firearm Prevalence: A Test Of Cook's Index Across The Rural–Urban Continuum, Noah R. Cypher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cook's Index is the most commonly used proxy for firearm prevalence. This research uses New York's Pistol Permits to measure legitimate firearm prevalence and compare it to Cook's Index. In this study, Cook's Index predicted impossible values for several counties that together contained a clear majority of New York State citizens. Cook's Index was also shown to be unreliable across types of counties. Rural and Urban counties had significantly different ratios of Cook's Index to Pistol Permits in New York. The models show a general finding that the relationship between Cook's Index and legitimate firearm ownership varies depending on the …

The Contested Terrain Of The Louisiana Carceral State: Dialectics Of Southern Penal Expansion, 1971–2016, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“The Contested Terrain the Louisiana Carceral State” examines the development of the Louisiana carceral state as produced from above and contested from below from 1971 to 2016. Through a combination of archival research, oral history interviews, and in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that Louisiana has expanded, consolidated, and adapted its carceral infrastructure in response to multiscalar political economic crises tied to global oil booms and busts, federal state interventions, and when oppositional movements gain traction. “Carceral infrastructure” refers to both the literal building of new state prisons and parish jails alongside passage of draconian sentencing laws, and bulking up of …

Generative Adversarial Networks And Word Embeddings For Natural Language Generation, Robert D. Schultz Jr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We explore using image generation techniques to generate natural language. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), normally used for image generation, were used for this task. To avoid using discrete data such as one-hot encoded vectors, with dimensions corresponding to vocabulary size, we instead use word embeddings as training data. The main motivation for this is the fact that a sentence translated into a sequence of word embeddings (a “word matrix”) is an analogue to a matrix of pixel values in an image. These word matrices can then be used to train a generative adversarial model. The output of the model’s generator …

A Study Of Factors Influencing Hiring Decisions In The Context Of Ban The Box Policies, Ronald F. Day

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates whether NYC employers adhered to Ban the Box by removing the question about criminal history from employment forms, by refraining from inquiring about an applicant’s criminal record during the interview process, and by complying with other aspects of the policy. The study also documents employer perspectives on Ban the Box and on the hiring of individuals with criminal convictions, and examines whether more individuals with a criminal record were hired after the policy was implemented.

Using a mixed-methods approach, surveys were administered to companies in the nonprofit and private sectors, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with a …

Intimate Partner Violence Among Expectant Adolescent Couples: Psychological And Relational Predictors And Sexual Risk, Jessica Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is prevalent and tends to be bilateral in adolescent relationships. Expectant adolescent couples are at even higher risk. Using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM), this study sought to: (1) describe the patterns of physical/sexual and psychological IPV victimization of women and men in expectant adolescent couples from pregnancy through twelve months postpartum; (2) examine the associations between psychosocial and relational factors during pregnancy and postpartum IPV; and (3) investigate the relationship between IPV victimization and later sexual risk across the perinatal period.

METHODS: Data were collected from pregnant adolescents and their male partners (N=296) recruited …

A Defense Of Pure Connectionism, Alex B. Kiefer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Connectionism is an approach to neural-networks-based cognitive modeling that encompasses the recent deep learning movement in artificial intelligence. It came of age in the 1980s, with its roots in cybernetics and earlier attempts to model the brain as a system of simple parallel processors. Connectionist models center on statistical inference within neural networks with empirically learnable parameters, which can be represented as graphical models. More recent approaches focus on learning and inference within hierarchical generative models. Contra influential and ongoing critiques, I argue in this dissertation that the connectionist approach to cognitive science possesses in principle (and, as is becoming …

A Meta-Analysis Of Information Processing Measures Of Intelligence, Performance, And Group Score Differences, Elliott C. Larson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Intelligence is one of the most studied constructs in industrial-organizational (I-O) and educational psychology. Findings from numerous studies and meta-analyses have consistently demonstrated the power of intelligence measures to predict performance across a wide range of domains. This research has been fruitful and provides strong evidence for the utility of intelligence measures in organizations and schools. However, while intelligence measures have been developed and applied for over a century, most research in I-O psychology has relied on operationalizations of intelligence that focus on a person’s knowledge. Meta-theories of intelligence propose that intelligence can simultaneously be conceptualized as a person’s ability …

Recognition By Flickering Components: The Effect Of Temporal Modulation On Image Recognition, Alla Chavarga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A primary goal of vision is to identify objects rapidly and efficiently. Successful object and scene recognition results from the integration of both feed-forward and feedback processes that correspond a two-dimensional retinal image to a representation of its content stored in memory (Bar, 2003). One general organizing principle may be that the visual system analyzes images and scenes according to their spatial components in a coarse- (low spatial frequency) to-fine (high spatial frequency) sequence (Bullier, 2001; Hegde, 2008). An individual’s sensitivity to these spatial components is described by contrast sensitivity function (CSF), which indicates the minimum contrast required for the …

The Difficulties Of Filming Syrian Refugee Populations Living In Jordan: Obstacles To Objectivity And Accuracy In Reporting, Thaddeus E. Decaprio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project seeks to explain and address the challenges inherent in filming and documenting Syrian refugee populations in Jordan. This project will take the form of a narrative research paper in conjunction with a video component comprised of the first-hand accounts of several refugees who consented to sharing their stories on camera. I went, along with my brother Louis (a filmmaker), to Jordan to document firsthand the stories of Syrian refugees in their own words. We were invited to film for the Women ASPIRE project of an organization called ASPIRE (Advancing Solutions in Policy, Implementation, Research, and Engagement for Refugees), …

Internal Displacement In The United States: A Result Of Climate Change And U.S. Policy, Ahmad T. Diop

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Abstract

Internal Displacement in the United States: A Result of Climate Change and U.S. Policy by

Ahmad Tidjany Diop

Advisor: Karen Miller

This thesis will focus on arguments for an open border. I demonstrate that open borders are necessary because land is scarce. I focus on the United States, which is currently dealing with internal displacement due to climate change. The moral, human rights, and political claims I will make open borders are reasonable because climate change will make certain parts of the world uninhabitable.

When I say internal displacement I am referring to those displaced in the United States …

Mandarin Assessment In Chinese-English Bilingual Preschoolers, Jennifer A. Chard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Immigrant children who grow up in linguistically and culturally diverse households are at risk for misdiagnosis for language impairment and inappropriate placement in or exclusion from special education classes. Research shows that native language testing is essential in determining eligibility for disability services, as reflected both in federal law (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004). However, despite growing agreement that native language assessment is a critical component to understanding the abilities and challenges bilingual students face, the standard assessments currently used are largely administered in Standard English and normed on monolingual English speakers. Few options are available to …

The Equal Right To Sing: The American Zeitgeist And Its Implications For Music Education, Youngeun Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

According to music educators and proponents of arts education, music education in U.S. public schools seems to be in jeopardy. This thesis brings attention to several issues in current music education. It is a case study of music education in New York City public elementary schools. First, it shows that music education is not equally distributed to all students in the public-school system and is especially unequal among elementary schools. Next, it investigates possible causes for this inequality, from the current system’s limitations to more fundamental causes including the cultural perception of music among the U.S. public. The consequences of …

Identity Shifts Among Cis- And Trans- Females Who Sell Sex On The Streets Of New York City, Amalia S. Paladino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Deviant Identity Shift (DIS) Model that is introduced in this dissertation provides a framework for making sense of how sex workers come to understand their own place in the world, including the experiences of violence that often accompany their lives, and it shifts our attention away from static models that focus on unidimensional or even multidimensional factors that impact the lives of sex workers, to a far more dynamic view of the evolution of their distinctive forms of cultural identity. A series of themes emerge from the life histories of 18 cis- and 15- trans women between the ages …

Immigration, Small Business And Assimilation: Three Stories Of Small-Time Capitalism On The Lower East Side, Marcus Hillman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Small businesses in New York City have often been a catalyst to assimilation for individual immigrants, their families and their communities. For this capstone project, I have recorded conversations with three small-time entrepreneurs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and created a narrative audio piece that explores some of the important and study-worthy characteristics of New York City including economic opportunities in the city, immigration, assimilation and the ways that New Yorkers share space, just to name a few. These themes are threads that ran through all three of the conversations that I had and are crucial elements of …

Shapes And Transitions Of The Interest Rate Term Structure, Biwei Chen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I analyze different shapes of Treasury yield curves in order to better reflect and predict the U.S. economy. Since the late 1980s, macroeconomists have found that the slope of the yield curve predicts economic activity such as inflation, output growth, and recessions, but they have not fully examined the links between various shapes of yield curve and the macroeconomy. To fill the gap, I classify yield curve shapes with the U.S. Treasury yield data, detect the shape patterns over the business cycles, and map these shapes onto corresponding inflation and production states. Although the downward-sloping yield curve reliably predicts U.S. …

Articulation Of The Japanese Moraic Nasal: Place Of Articulation, Assimilation, And L2 Transfer, Ai Mizoguchi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The moraic nasal /N/ in Japanese has been transcribed in multiple ways, but very few studies have examined its articulation. The nature of its assimilation has often been described in phonology, but again, very few articulatory investigations have been conducted. Also, while a first language (L1) effect on second language (L2) production has been discussed for some phonemes, there is no good research on the effect of Japanese /N/ on L2 English syllable-final nasals. This dissertation investigates the articulation of the moraic nasal /N/ in Japanese using an ultrasound articulatory imaging technique to assess 1) its place of articulation, 2) …

A Parade Of Identities: Negotiation Of Ethnic Identities In Three New York City Cultural Parades, Julia M. Herrera-Moreno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Parade of Identities” is a digital project that applies social theories of international migration, psychology and cultural anthropology to ethnographic visual data in order to analyze ethnic identity and urban space appropriation found in three of New York City’s cultural parades. The project traces and analyzes the historical meaning and emerging directions in terms of ethnic identity construction, of NYC immigrant parades through the use of the author’s photography and video collections (2012-2018) of St. Patrick’s Day, Columbus Day and Chinese New Year parades, in association with a website and blog via digital humanities’ platform. Additionally, by activating the …

Little Siberia, Star Of The North: Prisons, Crisis, And Development In Rural New York, 1968–1994, Jack Norton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is a study of how prisons became a common sense solution to economic and social decline in northern New York in the 1980s, about how prisons became synonymous with development in rural counties in the long wake of New York City’s fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s. The United States imprisons more people per capita than any other nation-state on earth. The number of U.S. prisoners has increased nearly six fold since 1970 and there are now over 2.25 million people incarcerated across the country. Accompanying and encouraging this rise in the prison population was an expansion of the prisons …

Police Officers And College Education: The Association Of Police Officer College Education And The Level Of Force Used By A Police Officer In Gaining Compliance In Arrest Situations, John Vespucci

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The objective of this study was to research the association between a police officer’s college education and the level of force a police officer uses to gain compliance when making an arrest. There is a strong agreement in existing literature that the college education of a police officer has positive effects upon police officer skill sets including the use of force. However, this study seeks to update existing literature as most studies are over a decade old, which is problematic due to the fact that they are outdated and may not represent the challenges in contemporary policing. This study collected …

Why Is The Black Population Of Central Brooklyn, The Mecca Of Black Nyc, Diminishing?, Jamell N.A. Henderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research looks at three possible reasons that might help to explain this unfortunate exodus. The first approach is through health and examines trends in environmental, mental and physical (general) health. I will explore statistics involving the health and well-being of Central Brooklyn, how the environment plays a disparate role in the poor health and lack of access to services of its African-American residents in comparison to other regions in Brooklyn. The second task is to ask how economics or “racial capitalism” plays a role by looking at gentrification, cooperative economics, and the income inequality in Black Central Brooklyn. The …

Constructing Social Identity Through The Past: The Itza Maya Community Identity Through The Late Postclassic Period (1250–1525ce), Yuko Shiratori

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the construction of social identity of the Itza Maya during the Late Postclassic period (1400-1525 CE) at Tayasal in the Petén lakes region, Guatemala. The Itza were the last indigenous group conquered by the Spaniards in the Americas in 1697. Various ethnohistorical documents describe the people and socio-political organization of the Itza during sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Avendaño y Loyola 1987; Edmonson 1982, 1986; Jones 1998; López de Cogolludo 1971; Roys 1967; Villagutierre Soto-Mayo 1983). According to the documents, the Itza of the Petén claimed to have migrated from the great city of Chich'en Itza in …

Police Reform In Ukraine Since The Euromaidan: Police Reform In Transition And Institutional Crisis, Nicholas Pehlman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Why does reform of law enforcement remain so elusive in post-communist countries like Ukraine, despite political upheaval, a public mandate for reform and substantial international assistance? Which components contribute to the success and sustainability of a police reform and which factors produce political will from political leaders to implement the difficulties of police reform? This dissertation argues that in addition to massive corruption and the politics of insecurity, the greatest challenges to reform of Ukraine’s law enforcement system is political competition, resulting in the politicization of law enforcement institutions and law enforcement policy. Political competition is based in Ukraine’s fractured …

The Morphology And Evolution Of The Primate Brachial Plexus, Brian M. Shearer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Primate evolutionary history is inexorably linked to the evolution of a broad array of locomotor adaptations that have facilitated the clade’s invasion of new niches. Researchers studying the evolution of primates and of their individual locomotor adaptations have traditionally relied on bony morphology – a practical choice given the virtual non-existence of any other type of tissue in the fossil record. However, this focus downplays the potential importance of the many other structures involved in locomotion, such as muscle, cartilage, and neural tissue, which may each be influenced by separate selective forces because of their different roles in facilitating movement. …