Digital Commons Network^™

Digitization Guidelines For Static & Non-Static (Audiovisual) Media: Compliance & Challenges In Academic Libraries, Maali Alghnimi

Theses and Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation aims to explore digitization practices at academic libraries in the United States. It examines adopted digitization guidelines, levels of compliance with these guidelines, challenges, and solutions. It seeks answers to five research questions in relation to academic libraries’ compliance with static and non-static (audiovisual) media digitization guidelines, encountered challenges, and applied solutions. A mixed methods explanatory research design was adopted for this comparative study. Purposive sampling was applied. The study sample consisted of 68 subjects from doctoral universities with highest and higher research activity based on the 2015 classification issued by The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of …

Refugee Resettlement And Perceptions Of Insecurity: A Comparative Study Of The United States And Canada, Erik Amundson

Dissertations

In the United States and Canada, refugee resettlement has been the subject of extensive scrutiny and political debate, particularly since the November 2015 terrorist attacks carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) against targets in Paris. While public opinion polls have shown increasingly negative attitudes toward refugees, existing survey questionnaires only provide a limited understanding of what shapes these views. As such, this study focuses on two important factors that influence attitude formation toward refugees, pre-existing levels of knowledge and contact with minority groups. Using a comparative case study approach, this research examines how refugee resettlement …

Gender And Terrorism: A Homeland Security Perspective, Diana Rosa Rodriguez-Spahia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While scholars have been studying the growing trend of female terrorists for several years, their research has not permeated politics or the media to help inform our Homeland Security policies. The findings from this body of research indicate that there is hesitance on behalf of the public (especially politicians and law enforcement) to acknowledge that women can be terrorists due to deeply engrained gender norms and expectations about gender roles. Terrorist groups are exploiting this unwillingness by recruiting more women to perpetrate terrorist acts (Lele, 2014; Bloom, 2011). Against the backdrop of the changes in gender norms and expectations that …

Neoliberalism And The School Choice Movement In The United States, Lianne M.A. Mulder

MA Research Paper

This paper investigates the role of neoliberalism in the advocacy for and implementation of school choice in the United States. It applies conflict theory of education to the school choice debate and uses post-Katrina New Orleans as a case study of school choice implementation. It concludes that neoliberal and like-minded think-tanks, foundations, and lobby groups are involved in the advocacy for school choice in the United States because it assists them in furthering their goals of influencing whose values and ideals will be taught and whose children will land the desired jobs; thereby maintaining the capitalist status quo and enabling …

Exploring Female Genital Mutilation Practice Among West African Immigrants In The United States: A Community-Based Participatory Action Research Study, Kani Diop

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This community-based participatory action research study’s primary purposes were first to reach a fuller understanding of the reasons for the continuation and perpetuation of FGM in the context of immigration and second to find out how the New York-New Jersey West African im/migrant community wanted to address FGM. This research afforded the conceptualization of West African im/migrant thoughts, tradeoffs considerations, and calculations behind the FGM decision-making process. The data divulged the West African im/migrants’ concept of mobility and reflect a specific idiosyncrasy in their relentless intent to return to their native countries. This conscious conviction brands them as migrants rather …

Losing Home: Housing, Displacement, And The American Dream, Jessie Speer

Dissertations - ALL

Over the past decade, new oral history archives and self-publishing platforms have led to an explosion in the production of memoirs and oral histories of homelessness. This dissertation frames the growing genre of homeless life narratives as a form of urban theory that has been largely displaced from public memory. Based on close readings of hundreds of memoirs and oral histories of homelessness from cities across the United States, this research highlights the violent geographies of the American dream, in which both political economies of urban housing and heteropatriarchal cultures of domesticity produce racialized and gendered cycles of displacement. Further, …

Old Belief And The Balance Of Red And Blue: How Old Believers Managed Cultural Infringement, Joseph K. Van Den Berg

History

This paper covers the spread of the Old Believers into Western society, studying how they changed and evolved during the Cold War. The paper focuses on two communities, using them to compare the different attitudes Old Believers had towards differing host cultures. Using a litany of newspapers and the work of a few dedicated anthropologists, "Old Belief and the Balance of Red and Blue: How Old Believers Managed Cultural Infringement" shows the vast array of responses to a small group of Russian sectarians establishing themselves within Western Cultures of differing size and values.

Islamic Terrorism In The United States – The Association Of Religious Fundamentalism With Social Isolation & Paths Leading To Extreme Violence Through Processes Of Radicalization., Shay Shiran

Student Theses

This exploratory study focuses on identifying motivations for religious terrorism and Islamic terrorism in the United States in particular. Terrorism is a crime of extreme violence with the end purpose of political influence. This crime is challenging to encounter for its multi-faced characteristics, the unusual motivations of its actors, and their semi-militant conduct. The hypothesis of this study asserts that religious terrorists are radicalized by passing from fundamental to extreme devout agendas, caused by isolation from the dominant society, and resulted in high potential to impose those agendas by extreme violence. Under the theoretical framework of subculture in criminology, this …

Nasty Women: Television Portrayals Of Societal Anxieties Toward Female Leaders, Emily Sullivan

Honors Theses

Historically, women have been excluded from leadership positions around the world, while instead men occupy the highest positions of power in society. The lack of female leadership is especially prevalent in the United States, where there has never been a female president, and the majority of high political offices are still held by men. In a similar manner, women have also been excluded from the sphere of comedy throughout history. Women have constantly had to deal with the assertion that women are not funny. This double exclusion from both leadership and comedy has led to the development of my concept …

Construction Of A Tropical Cyclone Size Dataset Using Retroactive Analysis Data With A Damage Application, Derek Trent Thompson

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis introduces a new tropical cyclone (TC) size dataset. Using the radius of the outermost closed isobar (ROCI) as the size metric of focus, a comprehensive record of TC size at landfall was constructed for tropical storms and hurricanes that made landfall in the United States along the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. The ROCI information was derived from mean sea level pressure maps generated using the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis I dataset over a 69-year period (1948 – 2016). Construction of the dataset involved using two methodologies, one based on hourly interpolated HURDAT2 best tracks and the …

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.

El Viaje Desde Centroamérica A Los Estados Unidos: How Us Foreign Policy Impacts Migration From Central America To The United States, Cecilia Cerja

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

In the face of ever increasing civil conflict in Central America, the United States is attempting to grapple with immigration reform as the number of refugees continues to rise. Though the dominant narrative seems to indicate that people are flocking to the United States for economic opportunity, upon further analysis it seems that there are a variety of push and pull factors for migration to the United States. In this thesis three case studies of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are analyzed to determine the push and pull factors causing migration to the United States. After examining the push and …

Underwhelming Success Of United States Foreign Assistance, Yissett Peralta

Political Science

Foreign assistance offers, humanitarian support, military support and financial support to recipients who have faced some form of disaster. In my research I have concluded that the underwhelming success, is to do many things, a countries instability, corruption, but most importantly the time and finances the United is willing or not will to put forth for that country. In analyzing the underwhelming success, one must also factor in the goals and interest of the United States, providing aid to certain countries. In conducting my research and analyzing Iraq, Bosnia and Haiti, the money is not being used in an efficient …

Enamel Hypoplasia And Its Relation To Ethnicity And Socioeconomic Status In The 19th Century United States, Amanda Drew Olivas Cook

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) is a condition of tooth enamel characterized by linear bands in tooth enamel that result from metabolic stress during the childhood years of enamel formation. The presence of LEH has frequently been used in biological anthropology as a marker of stress experienced during childhood. This paper uses a biocultural approach to investigate the occurrence and severity of LEH defects on the teeth of African American and European American adult male remains in the Terry Anatomical Skeletal Collection. The Terry Collection consists of low socioeconomic status individuals whose remains were unclaimed at St. Louis morgues and hospitals, …

The Potency Of Policy?: A Comparative Study Of Filipino Elder Care Workers In The United States And Israel, Abigail F. Kolker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As the population of the United States and Israel rapidly ages, the elder care industry is expanding at an unprecedented rate. In-home care work is increasingly performed by migrants, many of whom are from the Philippines. This study, based on two years of ethnographic research and 163 in-depth interviews, examines how the United States’ and Israel’s differing immigration and labor policies impact the lives of Filipino caregivers. Despite vastly different policy approaches to migrant elder care workers—highly unregulated in the U.S. and highly regulated in Israel—this study found many striking similarities between Filipino caregivers’ migration and work experiences in the …

Human Trafficking: Flying Under The Radar, Amber L. Hulsey

Dissertations

The global hegemon, the United States encompasses roughly 57,000 to 63,000 of the roughly 45.8 million slaves present across the world today (Walk Free Foundation 2016a). This dissertation research uses the theoretical lens of Human Security as a unique approach in that it is people-centered, focusing on the individual, rather than the more traditional theories in international relations that emphasize the state as the central actor. This dissertation focuses on the understudied area of human trafficking into and within the United States. More specifically, the objective of this research examines the movement of trafficked persons via air and details actions …

A Workable Balance: Maternity Leave And Female Success In The Workplace In Finland And The United States, Karey J. Murphy

Social Work Doctoral Dissertations

The Family and Medical Leave Act was signed into law in 1993. FMLA, allowing for a few exceptions and criteria, provides unpaid leave for certain health conditions or for the birth or adoption of a child. While the United States offers a gender-neutral policy unlike most other nations, the leave is not required to be paid. This can have enormous impacts on not only a female’s decision to return to work after the birth of a child but her continued decision to pursue leadership roles within the workforce. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between female …

A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Perceptions By Public Relations Practitioners In The United States And Germany, Leila Schmidt

Theses and Dissertations

In our globalized world, becoming aware of the interdependence between public relations and culture becomes more and more important. This cross-cultural study combines an emic and etic approach to explore how PR practitioners in two individualistic countries, the United States of America and Germany, experience and perceive the impact of culture on their practice, specifically the development of campaigns. To understand the broader image, the study incorporates Hofstede’s (2009) cultural dimensions; to examine similarities and differences in terms of cultural nuances, the study relates to Spitzberg’s (2015) intercultural communication competence. The participants consisted of sixteen male and female PR practitioners …

“Older Adults And Their Experiences With Home Care And Assisted Living”, Faith Robinson

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

As the state of Maine and the U.S. population at large continues to age, discussion about future care and living arrangements for older adults has become an increasingly relevant issue. Older adults are often faced with a range of options for housing, including staying in their home in their community while receiving home care services, or moving to an assisted living facility.

Currently a gap in the research exists as to the attitudes, perceptions, and lived experiences of the older adults themselves around these decisions, experiences, and the meaning of “home” in our older years. This study aims to provide …

Are U.S. Based 'Jihadi' Inspired Terrorists Transitioning Away From Physical Training Camps To Online Training Camps?, Ashleigh Nicole Clayton

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of the backgrounds of twenty-five individuals who conducted a ‘jihad’ inspired terrorist attack within the United States between the years of 2001 and 2016 to determine if terrorists use physical training camps or online training camps as the main method of training to prepare for their attacks.

The debate about the existence of online training camps is beneficial to the field of terrorism study. However, the question of what constitutes an online training camp must first be answered before it can be determined if terrorists are using online training camps. This thesis proposes a comprehensive …

Military Citizenship In The Post-9/11 Homefront, Estefania Ponti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In discussion with the literature on the treatment of veterans in the United States and the nature of American citizenship ideology, the following dissertation asks how post-9/11 veterans are defining, (re)creating, and contesting citizenship in the contemporary U.S. By studying a localized community of post-9/11 veterans, my dissertation highlights the dilemmas of U.S. citizenship at a time when the U.S. is engaged in a global War on Terror using less than 1% of the U.S. population as paid volunteers. Soldiers and veterans occupy states and spaces of exception, marking military citizens as distinct from civilians. Military citizenship benefits the nation …

Cybersecurity In The Classroom: Bridging The Gap Between Computer Access And Online Safety, Andrew Malecki

Cyber Security Capstone Research Project Reports

According to ISACA, there will be a global shortage of 2 million cybersecurity professionals worldwide by 2019. Additionally, according to Experian Data Breach Resolution, as much as 80% of all network breaches can be traced to employee negligence. These problems will not solve themselves, and they likewise won’t improve without drastic action. An effort needs to be made to help direct interested and qualified individuals to the field of cybersecurity to move toward closing this gap. Moreover, steps need to be made to better inform the public of general safety measures while online, including the safeguarding of sensitive information.

A …

La Doctrina De Seguridad Nacional Chilena: Una Dictadura Legitimada Por Una Democracia (1973-1990), Juan Sebastián Rodríguez Trujillo, Karen Marcela Hernández Molina, Paula Tatiana Tirado Hernández

Negocios y Relaciones Internacionales

Durante el periodo definido como Guerra Fría se presentó un escenario oportuno para la redefinición de la concepción de seguridad nacional, convirtiéndola en lo que hoy se conoce como Doctrina de Seguridad Nacional. Dicha doctrina se gesta en Estados Unidos, pero se circunscribe en América Latina, bajo unos parámetros donde las fuerzas militares ocupan el lugar del Estado. Frente a ello, el caso de estudio se centra en el periodo de 1973 a 1990 en Chile, época en el cual se dio un régimen dictatorial. De acuerdo a lo anterior la presente investigación se pregunta cómo se concibió la noción …

The Gendered Impact Of Neoliberalism: Violence And Exploitation Of Women Working In Maquiladoras, Alice Schyllander

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

The global production process relies on classism, racism, and sexism to generate a reliable workforce in the global south to produce goods for the global north. Women who work in maquiladoras in Mexico disproportionately occupy low-wage, dangerous jobs that leave them more vulnerable to violence both in the workplace and in their communities. The human rights of women workers in maquiladoras will not be realized until the domestic and international mechanisms that are intended to provide labor protections are strengthened. Better working conditions have been achieved in maquiladoras through grassroots organizing efforts.

When The Clocks Strike Thirteen: Political Repression In Modern America (1990-2015), Faiza Begani

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Abounding acts of repression committed in democracies have continued to be overlooked and under-analyzed by many researchers and scholars due to "democratic exceptionalism". As the United States enters yet another consecutive year of declining political satisfaction and freedom. It has become pertinent that as conflict study researchers, scholars, and readers alike that there is a basic understanding of coercion including acts that have been committed within our own countries. Countless scholars have focused conflict study research on underdeveloped or emerging democracies, yet many have overlooked the seamy side of developed ones. This article aims to explain the relationship between the …

Climate Control: The Case Of Chilean Destabilization, Andrew Arlotto

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

The Need For Enhanced Physical Infrastructure In The United States, Tanvi Gandham

CMC Senior Theses

An examination of necessary infrastructure improvements in the United States.

"Do As I Say, Not As I Do": An Examination Of The Impact The United States Has On Nuclear Weapons Norms, Alex Kenchi Ohlendorf

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the reputation that the United States has for supporting and promoting three norms related to nuclear weapons: nonproliferation, non-use, and deterrence, while simultaneously examining the impact that United States actions can have on the saliency of the norms themselves. Ultimately, the United States has the ability to considerably impact the saliency of international nuclear norms, and has encouraged other states to accept and abide by them. However, there exists a disparity between the words and actions of the United States. In effect, the United States may “talk the talk” by expressing support and attempting to influence other …

The Relationship Between Millennials' Attitudes Towards The United States And Their Goals And Personal Constructs, Angelica M. Hernandez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine various aspects of Millennials' attitudes related to their beliefs about the United States and in the context of their personal, career, and family goals and ethnic identity. Another purpose of this study was to determine if selected personality variables would predict attitudes toward the United States. It was found that Millennials who held positive attitudes toward the United States in terms of being a viable country for them also had relatively clear and developed personal, career, and family goals. Moreover, three personality variables—resiliency, optimism, and (inversely) cynicism significantly contributed to Millennials' views …

Unequal Influence: The Impact Of Inequality On Trade Policy, Brian William Fitzpatrick

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Trade was a central issue in the 2016 US presidential election, with both major party candidates debating how trade impacts American workers. However, the current literature on trade policy outcomes and inequality has insufficient measures of public opinion on trade. I examine the varying roles the public and interest groups play in the trade policy formation process as inequality changes in democratic societies. I expect, as inequality increases, the public and mass based interest groups will have less resources to expend on influencing policymakers. Also, as inequality increases economic elites’ and business interest groups’ resources will increase, and they will …