Digital Commons Network^™

Points Of Attachment, Calvert Truxtun Jacks

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Accelerating Aggregation Efficiency: Using Postgres As A Cache With Mongodb, Mason Q. Porter-Brown

Senior Projects Fall 2021

For decades now relational databases, namely SQL, have been the industry standard. However, recently MongoDB and other NoSQL databases have been growing in popularity due to their flexibility and scalability. SQL still has the upper hand in a variety of areas, including data consistency, advanced and established analytics functions, and efficient “JOIN” functions. This project focuses on MongoDB’s shortcomings when it comes to replicating “JOIN” operations using MongoDB’s aggregate functions. “JOIN” operations refer to the action of comparing data from one or more collections of data and joining similar data together in order to analyze and draw statistics from the …

Pouring The Tea At Yum Cha: Redefining Chinatown’S Boundaries During Covid-19, Lance Sum

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Between Space And Memory, Arhant Shrestha

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Eliciting & Visualizing Bias In Hiring Practices, Tsitsi Mambo

Senior Projects Fall 2021

This project seeks to develop a way to elicit and visualize bias in the hiring process through the use of Markov Decision Processes, a mathematical framework for modeling decision processes. Three forms of the simulation: User-defined, Random, and Q-learning, were created and their policies were analyzed and compared. Heat Map and Donut Pie visualizations are utilized to present the Policies created from the Models. This project is designed to display the decisions as a form of countering bias during the hiring process.

"Bothe The Heye And The Lowe": Role Reversal And Medieval Animal Allegory, Rose A. Rugendorf

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

The Meaning Of Music, Caleb Loius Orenstein Carman

Senior Projects Fall 2021

This project combines solo performances of music on piano, collaborative playing/rehearsing, improvisation, and composition. In both parts of the project, I share my performances of François Couperin, J. S. Bach, Schubert, and Ravel, and include my own compositions alongside. I tackle certain pieces that lie within the ‘long eighteenth century’ and demonstrate how improvisation is an integral part of music-making for composers. I believe in order to fulfill my own desires as a musician, I need to develop my aptitude in multiple areas — performance, composition, improvisation, chamber music, etc. — in such a way that the practice of one …

"Useful Wooden Toys": Skateboarding As A Tool For Nyc Youth Advocacy, Simon Len Nichoson

Senior Projects Fall 2021

My senior thesis explores the role of skateboarding in youth development, and its further implications within the realm of youth advocacy and activism. A large part of my project involves ethnographic fieldwork in which I participate in a skate clinic for the Harold Hunter Foundation (HHF), a non-profit organization that primarily serves at-risk youth in New York City through skateboarding-related programming. Founded in memory of professional skateboarder Harold Hunter, the foundation also seeks to provide support and advocacy for the skateboarding community. While practicing self-reflexivity, I draw from the field of halfie anthropology, given that I am an avid skateboarder …

Si Solo Tu Supiera', Andy Garcia

Senior Projects Fall 2021

From my twelfth-floor apartment in the Manhattanville Projects, I look down at the valley that constitutes the 125th Street Fault and the trestle that supports the 1 Train. The fault line and the trestle symbolize a fracture in the continuity of Harlem on the y-axis of Broadway separating the newly constructed Columbia University Manhattanville Campus from the Manhattanville Projects and the General Grant Houses. This fracture is exacerbated by the physical geographic feature of the fault, the man-made trestle, as well as a division that was drawn by Columbia University and its disruption of the justice system that had existed …

Phanostrate And The Legitimization Of Professional Female Healers In Fourth Century Athens, Hannah Cremo

Senior Projects Fall 2021

The goal of this paper is to discuss the origins of female medical professionals and to explore the ways in which ancient female healers represented themselves. I argue that in fourth century Athens, legitimacy as a female medical professional in the eyes of doctors and the whole polis comes from a combination of using masculinized language to engage in medical discourse and feminine self-representation to expand the ideal of a “respectable woman.” Phanostrate’s funerary monument is the first look into how female healers legitimized themselves in the professional medical world, and so using her as a model, we can better …

Moral Systems In Nabokov's Fiction: Commentaries On Two Short Stories, Benjamin Yung Nathaniel Shaw

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Sonified Hudson Valley Landscapes And The Influence Of Industry, Jess Belardi

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Structures That Bind: An Examination Of Housing And Wealth Inequality In America And A Proposal For An Effective Economic Solution, Baylor Brown

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Given America’s violently racist history, it should not come as a surprise that housing inequality still runs rampant in 21st century American cities. What may come as more of a surprise, however, is the true complexity of housing inequality and its broader implications. Housing inequality is not an independent phenomena and there are a multitude of structures which enable housing discrimination to interact with and perpetuate other forms of discrimination. Economically speaking, a public banking option in the U.S would serve as an effective tool to regulate household finance and chip away at the foundations of inequality. While there are …

Dependence Theory, Levi Lakota Lowe

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

A Lamb To His Left, Dean Jamieson

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

A Major Decision: Examining The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence, Mindfulness, And Security In College Major, Anya Clare Swinchoski

Senior Projects Fall 2021

College is an important time for growth and self-discovery, as many prospective students have spent their entire childhood living at home with their parents and siblings. Choosing a major can be a daunting task, especially for those who have not given themselves the time and space to consider what academic and career areas interest them. The present study investigates whether emotional intelligence is associated with major identification and major satisfaction. Additionally, I investigated whether the “acting with awareness” subscale from the Five-Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) explains the relationship between trait emotional intelligence and major satisfaction as well as the extent …

Writing At The Horizon: How Producing Imagined Narratives Affects Mood, David Yu-Zhong Liang

Senior Projects Fall 2021

The present study explores the effect of three different writing activities and their subsequent effects on participant mood. Writing has been of particular interest for psychologists due to its use in interventions aimed at working through traumatic or stressful periods, and recent research has begun to explore the use of narrative in placing traumatic events and experiences in greater context. However, purely therapeutic, intervention-based writing exercises exclude a large amount of more expressive, imagined creations and narratives, which may have the capacity to reorient, contextualize, and otherwise positively affect a person’s mood. This study investigates whether employing the imagination may …

No Sentiments, Peter Cheung

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Characterizing Experience And Regulation Of Sexual Harassment Experiences Among Female Gamers In First-Person Shooters, Emma Dmitrievna Kisselev

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Female gamers frequently experience harassment from other players while playing online first person shooters and are frequently alienated from the online gaming community. Sexism within the video game community also manifests through the underrepresentation and sexualization of female characters, both of which have been shown to increase sexist attitudes (Bushman and Laroi, 2019, Dill et al 2008). The present study examined harassment towards women while playing online video games, as well as effects of harassment on mental health and gender masking behaviors. Additionally, the present study examined how the gender ratio of characters within a game affects harassment towards female …

From The Outside Looking In: Mass Media Representations Of Jews In The U.S., Evyatar Guttman

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Sickle Cell Adhesion To Blood Vessels, Peace Okoko

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Sickle cell disease is a hemoglobin disorder that occurs when there is a mutation on the hemoglobin gene. This leads to an irregular shape in sickle cells as compared to regular red blood cells. Sickle cells are also stickier than regular red blood cells because they contain higher levels of P-selectin, an adhesive molecule. The stickiness of Sickle cells can lead to them sticking in blood vessels, which in turn blocks oxygenated blood from reaching different parts of the body and eventually leads to a crisis. A crisis event causes extreme pain in the person experiencing it. A recent study …

Andres Polytropoi: Conceptions Of Identity In Homer And Lucian, Ruby Alling Ostrow

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

I Can Speak For You, Tchad Kayla Ross

Senior Projects Fall 2021

This novella is about a queer Caribbean- American young woman named Nessa struggling with her relationship with her mother. A death occurs that leads Nessa to discover her mother may not be who she previously thought she was. This coming of age story confronts the delayed state of self actualization that occurs when Caribbean culture meets queer identity.

Toward A Better Understanding Of Percussive Therapy And Pain, Alex Luscher

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Despite the rapidly-increasing widespread adoption of percussive therapy as a tool for pain management by individual consumers and health professionals alike, relatively little experimental research has been done to clarify the neural mechanisms implicated in the many anecdotal stories of pain reduction. Inspired by an evidence-based theory of pain perception, according to which the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex processes both physically and emotionally painful inputs, it was hypothesized that the application of a physical stimulus—percussive therapy—would decrease socially-induced pain more readily than a vibration-removed control. Six conditions spread over three phases of testing were designed to specifically isolate the effect …

Dreams To Remember, Seamus William Heady

Senior Projects Fall 2021

Dreams to Remember is a hybrid short film, somewhere between documentary and narrative fiction, offering a peek into the mind of my aging father, Peter. Eight years ago, Peter was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and subsequently Parkinson’s disease. As Peter’s body withers and his mind begins to betray him, he seeks refuge and redemption in his dreams.

Dreams to Remember’s candid narration, recorded in documentary style interviews with Peter, tell a story of struggle, grief, and mortality. Juxtaposing the frailty and solitude of life’s final chapter, preposterous dream sequence vignettes inject Peter’s humor and desires, allowing Peter to rewrite …

Mysterious Proposal, Henry Berger

Senior Projects Fall 2021

This is a mysterious proposal regarding a trio of films which harness an ‘energizing vision’ that lingers beyond the movie theatre. There is a focus on travel, memory, landscape and the internal world. I was interested in the ways in which the ephemeral experience of film may alter the way we take in the world around us; the way we process each other.

The Minx, Amirah B. Miller

Senior Projects Fall 2021

This story follows a reference to the biblical Jezebel with a modern twist using a fictional character called Trinity, an 18-year-old college student with a dark past.