Digital Commons Network^™

Internet Access And Freedom: Constructing And Reacting To Transnational Norms About Internet Diffusion And Use, Heather L. Katz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how demands for Internet access have taken shape in the international system and to what degree a right to access or the Freedom to Connect (F2C) can be said to exist. It also studies how states have responded to demands rel­ated to access and Internet penetration. A review of the literature reveals that most work concentrates on violations of users’ rights on the Web and bypasses questions about whether and how users can access this vital piece of technology. Utilizing discourse analysis, the study shows that the F2C is being framed by a diverse range of actors …

Genres Of Feminist Lives: Autobiography, Archives, And Community, 1970-1983, Meredith A. Benjamin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The desire to record lives and the conviction that such recordings would serve an important purpose for other women were the motivations behind much of the autobiographical writing in U.S. feminist writing of the 1970s and 80s. In Genres of Feminist Lives: Autobiography, Archives, and Community, 1970-1983, I argue that feminist writers in this period used autobiographical writing to create a sense of community among their readers: a new feminist public. Realizing the inadequacy of a sense of identification, these writers encouraged their audiences, in the words of Audre Lorde, to transform silence into language and action. While scholars …

Declining City, Born-Again Citadel: Faith-Based Organizations And The Reconstitution Of Inequality In Postindustrial America, Michael J. Boyle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the context of the hegemonic neoliberalism of recent decades, faith-based organizations (FBOs) have flourished as mechanisms for addressing poverty and other varieties of social need. For all of the contributions of contemporary anthropological research to the study of FBOs, however, most analyses have stressed the potency of FBOs and elided the agency of recipients. The present dissertation aims, through a multisited study of Evangelical FBOs in the postindustrial American city of Plainfield, to focus on the latter theme. Owing to the traditional behaviorism of American culture and also its Evangelical reproduction in FBO settings, the pursuit of charity thrusts …

Photodynamic Killing Of Human Cancer Cells With Smart Photosensitizer Materials And An Endoscopic Implement For Singlet Oxygen Delivery, Mihaela N. Minnis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The thesis describes progress on probe tips for a microoptic device for the precise delivery of the components necessary for photodynamic therapy (PDT) in a highly localized and controllable fashion. The thesis also summarizes results of a photosensitized oxidation study. The work focused on i) developing a photoactive fluoropolymer surface that will release sensitizer drug molecule for use in PDT, ii) designing new probe tips surfaces for use as sensitizer support for a microoptic PDT device, iii) exploring strategies for covalent attachment of sensitizers and model compounds to Teflon/PVA surfaces with the aim of being coupled with our microoptic device, …

Understanding The Glass Cliff Effect: Why Are Female Leaders Being Pushed Toward The Edge?, Yael S. Oelbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The glass cliff effect describes a real-world phenomenon in which women are more likely to be appointed to precarious leadership positions in poorly performing organizations, while men are more likely to be appointed to stable leadership positions in successful organizations (Ryan & Haslam, 2005). This effect represents a subtle, yet dangerous, form of gender discrimination that may limit workplace diversity as well as women’s ability to become successful leaders. Importantly, research exploring why women are preferred for more perilous leadership positions is lacking. The main focus of this dissertation is to systematically organize previous theory and empirically examine processes underlying …

Fundamental Parameters Of The Lowest Mass Stars To The Highest Mass Planets, Joseph C. Filippazzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The physical and atmospheric properties of ultracool dwarfs are deeply entangled due to the degenerate effects of mass, age, metallicity, clouds and dust, activity, rotation, and possibly formation mechanism on their observed properties. Accurate fundamental parameters for a wide range of substellar objects are crucial to testing stellar and planetary formation theories. To determine these quantities, we construct flux-calibrated spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for 234 M, L, T, and Y dwarfs and calculate bolometric luminosity (L_bol), effective temperature (T_eff), mass, surface gravity, radius, spectral indexes, synthetic photometry, and bolometric corrections (BCs) for each object. We use …

An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Ceo Compensation And Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Type And Quality, Nicole M. Heron

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The construct of corporate social responsibility (CSR) itself is comprised of three underlying components: environmental, social, and corporate governance. However, it is unclear from the extant literature whether and how these underlying components of CSR are related to CEO compensation. In the absence of a theoretical model of CSR that specifically considers its underlying components, I present in this paper an exploratory analysis of the relationships between CEO compensation and CSR disclosure type and quality. My CSR proxies are based on a firm’s environmental, social and corporate governance-related disclosure, as reported by Bloomberg. I calculate total CEO compensation as the …

Relative Clause Sentence Comprehension By Japanese-Speaking Children With Specific Language Impairment And Children With Typical Language Development, Miho Sasaki

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Comprehension of sentences with relative clauses was examined in Japanese-speaking children with SLI and children with TLD. The children with SLI showed comparable comprehension with the TLD peers, when the language and memory tests’ scores were controlled. The children with TLD consistently had difficulties in OR sentences than SR sentences, in spite of that Japanese relative clauses are different from English ones. The children with SLI showed the opposite pattern. Working memory rather than language knowledge predicted better the comprehension performance for all the children.

Examining Relationships Between Basic Emotion Perception And Musical Training In The Prosodic, Facial, And Lexical Channels Of Communication And In Music, Jamie Twaite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research has suggested that intensive musical training may result in transfer effects from musical to non-musical domains. There is considerable research on perceptual and cognitive transfer effects associated with music, but, comparatively, fewer studies examined relationships between musical training and emotion processing. Preliminary findings, though equivocal, suggested that musical training is associated with enhanced perception of emotional prosody, consistent with a growing body of research demonstrating relationships between music and speech. In addition, few studies directly examined the relationship between musical training and the perception of emotions expressed in music, and no studies directly evaluated this relationship in the facial …

Dual-Aspect Meter: A Theory Of Metrical Consonance, Dissonance, Weight, And Variety, Andrew Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The core argument of the dissertation emerges as a synthesis of ideas introduced in the first four chapters. Resonances with recent metrical theories are explored in chapter 1. Chapter 2 problematizes modern and historical theories through a phenomenological examination of meter and phenomenal accent in a few baroque sarabandes. Meter in these pieces is shown to involve entrainment to both a beat hierarchy and a recurrent weight profile, clarifying that metrical dissonance is fundamentally an expressive category, not a phenomenal category. Chapters 3 and 4 articulate a theory of weight, reviewing and refining phenomenal-accent theory, developing a notion of …

Dialogic Faiths: Multi-Genre Expression In Religious Narrative, Rosemary L. Demos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As persuasive or expository texts, religious conversion narratives tend towards monologic language, and texts that advocate one particular creed or institution often reflect the unity of faith through linguistically totalizing methods. This study, however, examines the dialogic interactions found in certain religious narratives. The texts included in this analysis recount unusual conversion outcomes: not to formally established church institutions, but rather to a heightened religious experience and in some cases a call to leadership in establishing new social orders. In these texts, the dynamic between personal and communal religious experience is tense, sometimes precarious; the difficulties of engaging in social …

I. Synthesis Of Diverse Structures From Quinone Monoketal And Quinone Imine Ketal With Efficiency And Control Ii. Synthetic Study Of Phalarine, Zhiwei Yin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Quinonoids are quinone derivatives that have carbonyl or carbonyl equivalent and even number of double bonds embedded in six member rings. As a result of the intrinsic α,β-unsaturated ketone or imine structures, quinonoids, such as quinone monoketals, quinols, quinol ethers and quinone imine ketals, can accommodate a wide range of reactions including 1,2-additon, 1,4-addtion, SN2’ reaction (allylic substitution) to the α-carbon of the carbonyl or imine and cycloaddition reactions (e.g. Diels-Alder reaction). Quinonoids are effective building blocks for synthesizing heterocycles, which are ubiquitous in pharmaceutically useful agents. Developing new quinonoid based methodologies is essential to expanding the boundary of synthetic …

Seeking Holiness: The Contribution Of Nine Vernacular Narrative Texts From The Twelfth To The Fourteenth Centuries, Stephanie Grace Petinos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Spirituality has been increasingly studied to determine the laity’s role within Church history in the Middle Ages. However, secular literature is often overlooked as a source of understanding lay spirituality, even though it is a crucial aspect of cultural and social history. I fill this gap by analyzing nine important vernacular texts to uncover several distinctive definitions of holiness, all of which blend the religious and the secular. Close reading of these texts reveals various paths to holiness, which undermine the Church’s attempts at sole control over spirituality. This study demonstrates that secular authors were concerned with exploring spiritual matters; …

An Escape From Language Into Language: The Internal Exile Of Louis Wolfson, Antoine N. Rideau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper aims to show how the life and work of American francophone author Louis Wolfson - who suffered from schizophrenia and underwent a self-imposed exile from his own mother tongue - might serve to illuminate European émigré writers' relationships to multilingualism.

Power And Proximity: The Politics Of State Secession, Elizabeth A. Nelson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

State secession is a rare occurrence in the international system. While a number of movements seek secession, the majority fail to achieve statehood. Of the exceptional successes, many have not had the strongest claims to statehood; some of these new states look far less like states than some that have failed. So what accounts for these secessions? I argue that the politics of regional actors drive the process. If a secessionist movement does not have the support of actors in the region, it will not achieve statehood. There are three mechanisms through which regional actors can determine outcomes: (1) they …

My Mother Needs Me! Is It Possible To Stay Connected While Being My Own Person? The Object Relations Of The Latina “Dutiful Daughter”, Juliana Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Latinas are culturally expected to be “dutiful daughters” establishing strong attachments and adhering to the traditional values characterized by loyalty, cooperation, respect and interdependence within family members. Conventional Latina mother-daughter bonds, therefore, are expected to be exceptionally close. Healthy mother-daughter closeness can be a valuable source of support while closeness without differentiation from the mother may result in a lack of independence and poor interpersonal and personal growth. Mutuality of autonomy, a dimension of object relations (OR) theory, focuses on the progression of separation – individuation from developmentally normative fused representations in infancy to highly differentiated self-other representations as …

Evolving The Genre Of Empire: Gender And Place In Women's Natural Histories Of The Americas, 1688-1808, Diana Epelbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the eighteenth century, “natural history” was a capacious genre designation that alluded to conventions as diverse in their cultural and political resonances as they were in their applications within the New Science. My project is a genre study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural history text and art produced by women scientists, explorers, colonists, and early Americans writing the New World; it destabilizes rigid notions of genre that exclude women, suggesting that genre is by nature fluid, inclusionary as well as exclusionary. To this end, I return into conversation understudied naturalists Maria Sybilla Merian, Jane Colden, and Eliza Pinckney, who …

Mad Men Of Letters: Advertising, Masculinity, And The American Postmodern Novel, Jennifer Chancellor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I account for the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of the American postmodern novel that has long puzzled scholars by arguing that the genre must be understood as an expression of dominant masculinity threatened, not by women or people of color, but rather changes in postwar business and consumer culture. I support this claim by examining works by some of the founding American postmodern novelists—Joseph Heller, Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon—through the lens of historicism and biography. As advertising and publicity professionals in the postwar period, these men were positioned to offer a “complicitous critique” of …

A Convenient Myopia: Seek, Shaughnessy, And The Rise Of High-Stakes Testing At Cuny, Sean Molloy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A great struggle for racial justice was fought at City College and CUNY from 1964 to 1978. In this archival history, supplemented with thirteen oral histories of students and teachers, and grounded in the larger context of racial segregation and exclusion within American public education and American higher education through 1970, I argue that this larger struggle for justice should be seen as two distinct but intertwined struggles that had very different results. Throughout this history, I focus on individual teachers and students who either played key roles or whose experiences illustrate aspects of the larger issues. Some of their …

Perception And Production Of /V/ And /W/ In Hindi Speakers, Vikas Grover

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the ability of Hindi speakers to identify, discriminate and produce two English phonemes /v/ and /w/ which are difficult for Hindi speakers to distinguish. In Hindi, /v/ and /w/ are used interchangeably. This pattern of use has transferred to Indian English, resulting in English /v/ and /w/ words showing variable pronunciations (e.g., “whale” or “vale” for the word “whale”). Hindi speakers were asked to identify, discriminate and produce tokens of /v/ and /w/. This study also examined whether experience with American English, related to the length of residence (LOR) in the US affects Hindi listeners’ perception and …

A Behavior Analytic Intervention To Teach Exploratory Motor Behavior To Infants With Down Syndrome, Sara M. Bauer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Exploratory Motor (EM) behavior refers to manipulating a toy in the hand(s). Infants with Down syndrome demonstrate significant impairments in the duration and frequency of EM behavior compared to their typically developing counterparts. A behavior analytic intervention involving multiple opportunities, prompting, and social reinforcement was used to teach three infants with Down syndrome between 4-9 months of age to emit EM behavior. Results indicate that all three infants with Down syndrome emitted the three EM target behaviors to mastery and demonstrated generalized responding across stimuli and other EM behaviors. The importance of these findings in addressing impairments in infants with …

Radical Interiorities, Aesthetic Selves: Charlotte Brontë, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Miciah Hussey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In her essay “On Being Ill” (1926), Virginia Woolf writes “We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others…There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown.” My dissertation explores how the novel’s attempts to represent this inherently intimate and estranging “virgin forest” also test its formal limitations. From free indirect discourse to stream of consciousness, the development of the novel is marked by different modes of reproducing inner life that push beyond the boundaries of historical, social, and physiognomic indices. I argue that these narrative and …

Vocal Rhythm Coordination And Preterm Infants: Rhythms Of Dialogue In A High-Risk Nicu Sample, Adrianne E. Lange

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The contemporary bio-psycho-social view of mother-infant relationships holds that early interactions form the foundation of the growing infant’s sense of himself and the world. Prior to the development of linguistically-based communication, nonverbal communication patterns foster the infant’s socio-emotional growth, cognitive capacity and the development of optimal regulatory patterns. Preterm birth significantly alters the typical developmental trajectory on multiple levels and disrupts normal neurobiological and socio-emotional maturational processes, including those that build on early interpersonal experiences with caregivers. The current study of vocal rhythm coordination in preterm mother-infant dyads is the first of its kind. Aspects of infant prematurity (degree of …

On Sums Of Binary Hermitian Forms, Cihan Karabulut

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In one of his papers, Zagier defined a family of functions as sums of powers of quadratic polynomials. He showed that these functions have many surprising properties and are related to modular forms of integral weight and half integral weight, certain values of Dedekind zeta functions, Diophantine approximation, continued fractions, and Dedekind sums. He used the theory of periods of modular forms to explain the behavior of these functions. We study a similar family of functions, defining them using binary Hermitian forms. We show that this family of functions also have similar properties.

Post-Apartheid Citizenship And The Politics Of Evictions In Inner City Johannesburg, Anthony Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, this ethnographic study examines the phenomenon of eviction within the context of the post-apartheid constitutional right to housing and legal protections against evictions. Rather than view evictions as a singular event, evictions are treated as a lived experience intrinsically linked to the historical, political, and economic life of inner city Johannesburg and more broadly South Africa. I address how South Africa’s constitution creates both a platform for housing advocates to contest evictions and also allows property owners to evict tenants. To analyze evictions, I collected data through participant observation, media sources, archives, interviews, and legal …

The Antipolitics Of Food In Middle-Class America, Neri De Kramer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides an ethnographic account of the food and parenting practices of a diverse group of middle-class families in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. It starts from the basic premise that the economic pressures on the American middle classes find expression in family life around the socially reproductive work of choosing food and parenting.

The current economic climate marked with extreme and rising income inequality, low growth, high unemployment and stagnating wages has complicated the reproduction process for all parents in this study, regardless of income. Scholars have described how this concern for the future of the next …

Falling Forward: Continuity And Change In The Poetics Of Eden, Julie L. Gafney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation suggests that late fourteenth century vernacular poetry in Middle English takes up the idea of a secular Eden by which various non-normative theorizations of time and self are made possible. The invocation of a rich and multifarious Eden may be effectively understood through its relationship to the psychoanalytic theorization of origins by which Eden’s powerful potentiality for therapeutic or at least revelatory growth is inherent in its availability for processes of cyclical return. The present study will attempt to redress the tendency to treat Eden only as a fall and thereby gain a better understanding of the modes …

Therapeutic Targets For Alzheimer's Disease: Insights From In Vitro And In Vivo Models Of Inflammation, Magdalena J. Kiprowska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive neuronal loss that over the years spreads from the hippocampus to the neural cortex and impairs memory and cognitive functions. At the cellular level AD is linked to the presence of β-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles but despite decades of research little is known about their contribution to neurodegeneration and whether they are a cause or rather a result of the disease. It is well established that proteasome activity is impaired in AD brains and some studies suggest that this could be one of the initial factors leading to development …

Curing Violence: Prescriptions For Justice And Peace In Colombia, Marissa Crawford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos sits across the negotiating table from the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), justice as a conduit for peace has dominated discourse on remediating the legacy of more than 50 years of internal conflict. Justice, however, like the conflict itself, is contested in both meaning and substance. This thesis will approach the topic of justice from both a human rights and transitional justice perspective, arguing the need for systematically disentangling the concept in its international, domestic, and grassroots iterations. It will contend that transitional justice policy will more effectively be designed if …

Emotion Regulation In Relation To Cognitive Functioning In The Preclinical Stages Of Dementia, Erica P. Meltzer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Emotion regulation (ER) is essential for effective functioning in daily life. Research suggests that ER improves in older adulthood despite concomitant declines in cognition and the presumed neural substrates of ER. The current understanding of ER in older adulthood, and particularly of the relationship between ER and cognition in older adulthood, is limited. This is likely because the construct of ER is challenging to operationalize and, therefore, difficult to study.

The current study investigates ER in relation to cognitive functioning, specifically executive functioning and memory, in individuals with varying degrees of cognitive difficulties (i.e., in the preclinical stages of dementia). …