Digital Commons Network^™

Spotlight On Superfund: How Are New York’S Most Toxic Waste Sites Doing Under Trump’S E.P.A?, Sarah Stein Kerr

Capstones

No matter where you venture in New York City, you are never far from toxic pollution. And if you are in Brooklyn or Queens, you may be a stone’s throw from a federal Superfund, our nation’s most polluted sites.

For New York City’s Superfunds– Newtown Creek, the Gowanus Canal and the Wolff-Alport Chemical Company in Ridgewood, Queens – change is underfoot.

In February, President Donald J. Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Pruitt, who made a career for himself suing and attacking the E.P.A, has already instituted sweeping changes as part of …

Who Influences Your Outcomes? The Effect Of Culture And Ethnic Origin, Neighborhood And Peers On Personal Income: A Spatial Econometric Analysis Of New York City, Anna Arakelyan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Being a “social animal”, each person is inherently embedded into a complex structure of social relations. He has role models to aspire to, conformity rules to follow, and expectations to meet. This paper explores the different social influences each person experiences in life. Specifically, I consider how a person’s ethnic community, age reference group, occupational and industry group peers, and residential area neighbors affect his total income. I introduce a novel model of multiple social networks and discuss various identification implications. I apply the model empirically to New York City, which naturally is a very favorable environment to test for …

Reflections On The Implementation Of Improved Outcomes For Children And Its Impact On The Capacity Of Child Welfare Workers To Deliver Services, Rita Sanchez-Torres

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The emergence of the New Public Management with its emphasis on performance measurements and managerial strategies such as accountability, efficiency, and cost effectiveness have encouraged nonprofit child welfare agencies in New York City to pursue the practice of the private sector. In the current environment, service delivery has become more entrepreneurial, strategic and outcome minded on the assumption that the market-oriented approach is more effective (Watson-Bishop, 2007). This study examines the relationship between policy and service delivery. Specifically, it investigates the impact of the initiative known as Improved Outcomes for Children on child welfare supervisors in a managerial environment.

The …

“Just Get It Done”: How The New York City High School Admissions Process Is Re-Defining The Work & Identities Of Professionals In Screened High School-Programs, Heather Rippeteau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The implementation of the high school admissions process in the New York City Public schools, has re-defined the work and identities of professionals working the screened high school-programs. This study uses descriptive statistics culled from the Directory of New York City High Schools for 2007 and 2017, and interviews with school personnel from three screened school-programs, to review the impact of the implementation of this process during its first full decade in existence. These data establish the fact that screened school-programs are experiencing the phenomenon of marketization by way of their admissions process. Further, the implementation of this process generates …

Networked: New York City’S Charter Schools And The New Profiteers, Christina Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the extent to which corporate players and interests are represented on New York City charter school boards by collecting and analyzing board member data for all approved charters as of January 2013. The affiliations of individuals sitting on charter school and charter management organization boards are identified. The implications of those affiliations as well as their potential to affect school governance are explored within a modern educational landscape in which policy-making favors market-based approaches and provides new entry points for profiteering. The empirical analysis and conceptual framework for this study are informed by research on interlocking directorates …

Prescription Opioid Misuse: Initiation, Sources Of Supply, And The Role Of Medical Providers, Alexandra Harocopos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past 25 years, opioid analgesic misuse has increased dramatically in the U.S., with concomitant deleterious effects on health. Results from the 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that an estimated 4.3 million people aged 12 or older were current non-medical users of opioid analgesics, representing 1.6 percent of the population (SAMHSA, 2015), and unintentional drug poisoning deaths now surpass motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of injury death (CDC 2014). Opioid analgesics are produced in the U.S. within a system of tight control and any entity or person manufacturing, distributing, prescribing, or dispensing …

Affective Afterlives: An Ethnography Of Activism Between Movements, Manissa Maharawal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This ethnographic project starts at the end of Occupy Wall Street in New York City and ends at the beginning of Black Lives Matter in Oakland, CA. In between these two movements it looks at a variety of political projects that focused on issues of housing and anti-gentrification in New York City and San Francisco. Throughout I favor a view of social movements that understands the messy trajectories of activism. This methodological privileging of what activists are doing, and the places and spaces in which they ground their work seeks to de-center bounded social movements in the study of politics …

You'll Be Home By When?, Rebecca Centeno

Theses and Dissertations

You’ll be home by when? is a short personal documentary about trying to locate home. Through exchanges with my grandmother, I seek home in city and country. Reflections on family and loss reveal how we relate to spaces and to each other.

"The World Of Our Children": Jews, Puerto Ricans, And The Politics Of Place And Race On The Lower East Side, 1963-1993, Barry Goldberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how Jewish political leaders on the Lower East Side responded to neighborhood change, particularly the influx of Puerto Rican migrants, from the 1960s through the 1990s. Utilizing untapped archival material, including congressional records, municipal papers, legal files, articles from the ethnic press, and quantitative voting data, I demonstrate that the Lower East Side remained home to an influential network of Jewish political leaders, institutions, and voters long after the early twentieth-century. Residing on Grand Street, largely Orthodox, and often descended from Lower East Side Jewish immigrants, this political base created, shaped, and implemented antipoverty, education, housing, and …

Seeing And Being Seen: A Multimodal Inquiry Of Multilingual High School Newcomers And Their Contributions To Educational Communities, Ivana Espinet

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation research followed the experiences of seven high school newcomers who chose to participate in an internship program, assisting elementary school students, some of whom were also emergent bilinguals. This study used ethnographic and visual methodologies to explore young people’s evolving understanding of teaching, learning, and languaging as members of a community of practice within the internship.

The internship provided a space for the young people to make sense of schooling in their new country. The narratives that the interns shared highlight how the set of linguistic and cultural-historical repertoires of practice that they entered with shaped how they …

Clara Lemlich Shavelson: An Activist Life, Sarah B. Cohn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Clara Lemlich Shavelson is primarily known for her impassioned speeches during the 1909 Uprising of 20,000. The majority of histories written about her address her involvement in organizing women garment workers in New York’s Lower East Side from her arrival in New York in 1903 up through the eleven-week general strike in 1909. After this, the literature would have you believe she fades into obscurity, for there is only one book that addresses her life post 1909. Shavelson did not give up organizing after 1909. She got married, moved to Brooklyn, and started a family. In Brooklyn, she organized women …

Food And Negotiation Of Identity Among The Russian Immigrant Community Of Brighton Beach, Elena Starkova

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the construction of ethnic identity among Russian immigrants in New York, by examining how it has been negotiated and articulated through foods, including traditional and non-native foods as a vehicle for their shifting identities and for reaffirming their position and participation in mainstream American society.

Peer Rejection And Emotion Development: The Role Of Peer Rejection And Coming Out On Emotional Health Among Gay And Bisexual Men, Joseph A. Carter

Theses and Dissertations

Gay and bisexual men experience a higher prevalence of negative mental health outcomes than their heterosexual counterparts. This study examines sexual identity milestone achievement—the age of first coming out to friends—for mediation on the association between childhood experiences of peer rejection and levels of emotion dysregulation in adulthood.

Secret And Divine Signs: A Cinematic Ode To The Art Of Cruising, Terrence T. Hunt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cruising is a practice that connects people looking for casual sex through a series of gestures, behaviors and codes that signal one’s sexual orientation and interest. These cruising behaviors and codes are changing because of advances in technology, because of cruising’s sudden exposure to the wider community through media, and evolving cultural values that no longer demand gay sex be kept secret. Cruising is in the public consciousness like never before. This project, a short film entitled Secret and Divine Signs: A Cinematic Ode to the Art of Cruising, investigates, records and pays homage to the cultural practices of …