Digital Commons Network^™

Individual Thought Patterns: Women In New York's Extreme Metal Music Scene, Joan M. Jocson-Singh

Theses and Dissertations

Extreme metal music (EMM) is both an umbrella term and a sub-category of heavy metal. Although women have a small but steady presence in heavy metal, this number shrinks when applied to the EMM scene. Using ethnographic research, participant-observation and interviews, this study surveys women in New York's EMM scene to address participation, gender performativity and feminist musicology.

Broken: How New York Systems Fail Vulnerable Youth And Send Them To Sex Work, Megan Cerullo

Capstones

The very places where homeless youth seek refuge have become breeding grounds for those who sell sex to bait young people into what they refer to as “the life.” Homeless youth, particularly those who have already been sexually abused, by family members or neighbors, or in the foster care system, make vulnerable prey for exploiters, who loiter outside of shelters, and other organizations providing services to the disadvantaged population. Unwitting youth who are broke and homeless and former foster care kids often turn to pimps for food, clothes, shelter -- and affection.

Many victims are youth who have aged out …

How Drugs And Incarceration Tore One Family Apart, Deonna Anderson

Capstones

My capstone project follows the life of a mother and her children after her addiction to drugs and a prison sentence. It explores the impact of the criminal justice system on women and families.

Link to capstone project: http://deonnareports.com/2016/12/12/how-drugs-and-incarceration-tore-one-family-apart/

The 11 Percent: Black Conservatives In America, Janae M. Hunter

Capstones

For years, most African-Americans have voted democrat in presidential elections. But this year, Republican and president-elect Donald J. Trump got 8 percent of the black vote. And as of 2014, 11 percent of black Americans identified as a republican. Who are some of America's black republicans and conservatives, and did they vote for Trump? For this project, I spoke with several black republicans and black people with conservative ideologies about whether or not the voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election, and what it's like to be in the minority among other African-Americans.

https://medium.com/@janae.hunter/the-11-percent-black-conservatives-in-america-a57e37c02691#.5xs5my5mh

The Consequences Of The State Implementation Of A Nationally Standardized Teacher Performance Assessment As A Certification Requirement: A Mixed Methods Study, Deborah Greenblatt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The edTPA (Teacher Performance Assessment) is a nationally distributed and scored standards-based teacher performance assessment being promoted throughout the country (AACTE, n.d.-a). This mixed methods study investigated the experiences of New York City teacher candidates and teacher educators with the elementary education edTPA portfolio. It was found that teacher candidates experienced various supports and challenges based on their personal demographics, school of education, and student teaching placements. Additionally, the edTPA affected participants' personal, professional, academic and student teaching experiences. Furthermore, the study revealed ways that implementation of the edTPA affected teacher educators and the teacher education curriculum.

Based on the …

Institutionalizing Environmental Justice: Race, Place, And The National Environmental Policy Act, Keith K. Miyake

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I examine ways that the US National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) and its primary enforcement mechanism, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process, have reshaped the state as a site for racial and environmental conflict by institutionalizing a particular form of environmental justice within governmental decision making processes. Combining archival methods and legal analysis, I develop three case studies involving community struggles over the social production of space that each engage the EIA process to different effect. The case studies were selected based on what they reveal about the ways that the environmental justice framework intersects …

The Geography Of Financial Technology (Fintech) Companies In The New York Metropolitan Area, Frank C. Riggio

Theses and Dissertations

The Financial Technology (FinTech) industry uses technology to provide financial services more innovatively and competitively than traditional banks. A survey was conducted collecting original data of NY metropolitan area FinTech firms. Findings include a start-up heavy industry stemming from the 2008 financial crisis, prioritizing locational access to clients and funding.

Media Representation Of Asian Americans And Asian Native New Yorkers’ Hybrid Persona, Min Huh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Asian Americans, having been degraded in the realm of popular media and neglected in the consumer market, have been unable to obtain a voice or leave a trace in American pop culture. The meager representation that Asian Americans rarely have is highly controlled through a distorted lens, inclined to paint them in a grotesquely exaggerated light for comic relief. The absence of Asian Americans in the media has compelled the Asian American youth to adapt the personas of different cultures in their desires for social and cultural mobility. These factors have given birth to a hybrid persona among Asian Native …

Suburbs In Black And White: Race, Jobs & Poverty In Twentieth-Century Long Island, Tim Keogh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Suburbs in Black and White” examines how economic development shaped African American suburbanization on Long Island, New York from 1920 through 1980. After 1940, the fortunes of Long Island’s growing black population shifted from widespread poverty to upward social mobility, though by the 1960s, a divide emerged between the rising black middle class and black working poor, and distinctly ‘black’ suburbs emerged with problems familiar to postwar inner cities. While urban racial inequality is often framed in terms of housing segregation and the city/suburb divide, census and labor market data reveal that structural economic change across the New York metropolitan …

Windows On The World: The Aesthetics Of Difference In Neoliberal New York, Nicholas Gamso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to refine critical methods for interpreting global cities and their cultures, charting an aesthetic history of neoliberal New York — from the 1929 regional plan to the present. Surveying a range of literature, art criticism, and planning discourse, I argue that the global has served as the dominant motif of spatial production and political power during this watershed era. I trace this argument through analyses of midcentury planning’s global spatial imaginings, gentrification and imperial metaphor, transnational encounter in World literature, and the city’s contemporary waste and recourse imaginaries. While I follow the Marxist account of the New …

Madison Vanguard: A Novel, Berni Moestafa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project takes the form of a popular fiction novel that introduces parts of the academic discussion on capitalism to a wider audience through storytelling. Using a fictional fiscal crisis in New York as its setting, the novel discusses the relationship between capitalism and democracy. It therefore aims to address the underrepresentation of the debate on capitalism in popular entertainment and raise awareness about some of the debate’s key issues.

Popular culture be that music, film, books, media, videogames or advertisement surround our lives and expose us to a plethora of messages that help shape our understanding of the …

Export / Import: The Promotion Of Contemporary Italian Art In The United States, 1935–1969, Raffaele Bedarida

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Export / Import examines the exportation of contemporary Italian art to the United States from 1935 to 1969 and how it refashioned Italian national identity in the process. I do not concentrate on the Italian art scene per se, or on the American reception of Italian shows. Through a transnational perspective, instead, I examine the role of art exhibitions, publications, and critical discourse aimed at American audiences. Inaugurated by the Fascist regime as a form of political propaganda, this form of cultural outreach to the United States continued after WWII as Italian museums, dealers, and critics aimed to vaunt the …

Bilingual French Initiatives In Public Schools: A New York Story: New Opportunities, Diversity And Shared History And Values, Claire Jm Arnod Horikawa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The French bilingual programs in New York City public schools show the liveliness and diversity of the Francophonie. The French dual language programs in particular also reunite very different interests. There are the expected interests of communities wanting to keep a home language strong. Francophone parents wanting their children to use the language as an asset for a head start in the education race. English speaking parents, attracted by the language and its culture and wanting to give a head start to their monolingual children, as the world of business, and of science is multilingual. Schools and school principals are …