Digital Commons Network^™

The Misrepresentation Of American Sign Language And Deaf Culture In Mainstream Film Media A Call For Inclusive Representation, Katherine M. Hamilton, Dr. Lisalee Egbert

Global Insight

Mass film media has the power to shape popular culture and influence public opinions and perceptions; thus, properly portraying Deaf characters, the correct linguistic model of American Sign Language (ASL), and Deaf Culture in this powerful medium is crucial. This research examines the misrepresentation of Deaf Culture and ASL in film and its impact on realworld interactions between Deaf and hearing c/Communties. By analyzing historical film trends, bringing modern trends to light, and creating educational tools, this study aims to create measurable change in media practice. The study uses online questionnaires and interviews with ASL-fluent participants from the Deaf Community …

Full Issue, Global Insight Editorial Team

Global Insight

No abstract provided.

“Music Is The Instrument To Bring The Heart Of A Community Together”: Frederic Balazs And The Tucson Symphony Orchestra, 1952-66, Jackie Bodily Biggs

Theses and Dissertations

The audience for classical music is declining, according to data from the National Endowment for the Arts. In the face of such challenges, aspiring music professionals may find inspiration in the musicological illumination of pertinent historical case studies. This paper offers one such example via a foundational exploration of the musical career of Hungarian American violinist, conductor, and composer Frederic Balazs. Though lacking any dedicated scholarly literature to speak of, Balazs’s legacy as the first full-time conductor of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra (TSO) from 1952 to 1966 included establishing arts organizations and nourishing the classical tradition at its very grass …

Interview No. 1845, Carlos Sierra

Combined Interviews

Carlos Sierra was born in Juarez, Chihuahua in 1958 and moved to El Paso, Texas when he was in the seventh grade. After mastering English in his ESL courses and completing his high school education at Bowie, he continued his education at EPCC and UTEP in business, gaining the knowledge to help his brother effectively run Sierra manufacturing. He has come to value education, continuing personal development outside of formal education and encouraging his own children to pursue bachelors degrees and beyond. Most of the discussion focuses on manufacturing in the Chamizal area, including the work study programs at local …

“The Left Leg Is Not Well”: Identity, Economy, And Ability In Early Modern Drama, Emma D. Whaley

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The human reality of the disabled experience often goes overlooked by scholars analyzing early modern literature. Most scholarship seems to interpret disability as metaphorical without examining the human who experiences it. In this paper, I will be examining disability in three early modern texts as literal and inquire into the realities of the disabled experience for the characters. A Larum for London, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, and The Fair Maid of the Exchange all prominently feature a disabled character—Stump, Ralph, and Cripple respectively. These characters offer a depth of personhood rarely examined in early modern literary scholarship, even in …

Martin Tawney's Guide To The Middle Of Nowhere, Daniel D. Graham

English Honors Projects

Martin Tawney’s Guide to the Middle of Nowhere is a portion of a novel that parodies Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 samurai film Yojimbo. Yojimbo is a trickster narrative which drew influence from the noir genre and went on to influence other Westerns. This project turns that story into one about a travel writer who visits a town with two feuding hotels. The travel writer escalates the feud to create the story he wants to tell, but he loses control over it. The project explores what a trickster narrative looks like when the trickster cannot maintain their power over the story.

Independent English Teaching In Brazil: A Case Study, Jade G. Gunca

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study investigates the experiences and practices of successful independent English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in Brazil who operate outside traditional schools and private language institutes. Rather than providing a broad descriptive profile, this study offers an in-depth examination of a small group of teachers. These educators frequently use social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook to showcase communicative, personalized, and flexible instruction in response to growing learner demand. Although English is widely taught in Brazilian schools, persistent structural constraints often limit students’ development of communicative proficiency, prompting some learners to seek instruction from independent …

Domain-Specific Fine-Tuning Of Neural Machine Translation For Georgian Religious Texts, Jacob Brent Fisher

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates whether domain-specific fine-tuning of a large multilingual neural machine translation model improves translation quality for English-to-Georgian religious text, a low-resource pair underserved by existing systems. Using the 1.3-billion-parameter NLLB-200 model as a baseline, two LoRA-adapted variants were trained: General-FT, on 91,143 parallel segments of contemporary religious discourse drawn from the General Conference talks and other publications of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Scriptural-FT, on 33,229 segments from the scriptural canon of The Church. The three models were evaluated using automated metrics (BLEU, chrF, COMET) covering both domain-matched and cross-domain conditions, and on a …

Sae What? Magazine - Issue 1 - 2026, Sae University College

SAE What? - Student Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Taichung Polyglot, Mårten S. Saarela

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

Implementing Retrieval And Distributed Practice In A Rotating Block Schedule: Boosting Students’ Memory And Metacognition, Terra A. Caputo, Kaitlyn C. Hoffmann, Cindy Reagan, Guy D. Savastano, Brandon J. Foster, Kathryn Hallal, Kristin Miller-Gecsi, Thomas A. Yarcusko

Journal of Catholic Education

An all-boys secondary Jesuit Catholic school in the Midwest, recently transitioned to a rotating block schedule with the goal of supporting deeper learning for all students. Though the transition to longer class meetings helped achieve this goal, less frequent class meetings presented a new challenge in that it tended to exacerbate the natural “forgetting curve.” Retrieval practice, one of the most widely cited high-impact learning strategies to boost student memory, is most beneficial when used alongside spaced practice. A team of teachers implemented and tested the impacts of retrieval and distributed practice on memory in a rotating block schedule. Our …

Turbulence, Sophia Caneira

The Alembic

No abstract provided.

For The Sins Of The Father, Mary Kate Seiberlich

The Alembic

No abstract provided.

The Hate Circuit: A Collection Of Essays On Hate And Healing, Vivian Murphy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

The Hate Circuit: A Collection of Essays on Hate and Healing is a lyric essay collection tracing the neuroscience, psychology, and lived experience of hatred and its slow unraveling. Rooted in the author’s relationship with her alcoholic mother, the essays move between memoir and scientific inquiry, examining how hatred forms in the brain, how it is inherited across generations, and what it costs to sustain it. Drawing on research in neuroscience, attachment theory, and the psychology of forgiveness, the collection argues that hatred is not simply an emotion but a circuit—one that can, with effort, be rewired. The essays ultimately …

More Than Treating Errors: Bridging The Gaps And Expanding The Agenda For Scholarship On Teacher Written Feedback For L2 Writers, Lynn Goldstein, Robert Kohls

Journal of Response to Writing

Teacher written feedback is a central area of L2 scholarship and writing teacher education yet considerable research has focused on written corrective feedback (WCF) with considerably less attention paid to discourse-level (DLF) teacher written feedback. Our article identifies the gaps in the current teacher written feedback scholarship, explains why these gaps are problematic, and provides detailed recommendations for an agenda that examines teacher DLF and students’ use of this feedback. Our goal is to encourage scholars to explore new avenues of research that better take into account what writing “is” and “does” as well as take into account the linguistically …

Composing In Relation: Rethinking Multimodal Feedback As Rhetorical Design, Angela Laflen

Journal of Response to Writing

This qualitative study investigates how writing instructors compose feedback in multimodal digital environments, focusing on the rhetorical and relational dimensions of their design choices. Drawing on social semiotics and multimodal composition theory, the study analyzes feedback artifacts, instructor interviews, and student surveys from six first-year writing courses. Findings reveal that instructors engage in complex feedback design work across communication modes, often without formal training or shared frameworks. Instructors tended to default to text-based habits shaped by genre memory but adapted their strategies in response to communicative breakdowns and student needs. The study identifies three core themes: reliance on print-era conventions, …

Examining Automated Writing Evaluation Error Coverage In Relation To Uptake And Retention, Mohaddeseh Mehrzad, Mohammad Rahimi, Stephanie Link

Journal of Response to Writing

Despite the current widespread use of Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) feedback, many issues regarding its efficacy still remain unresolved. Recent studies mainly focus on correctly detected errors with a lack of attention on the comprehensiveness of error detection, or error coverage. Error coverage is interesting because little is known about the capacity of AWE systems to fully detect common second language (L2) errors. It is also important to investigate the potential effect of such capacity on student uptake and retention, which are important constructs in fostering L2 writing development. To this end, the present study compared teacher feedback and AWE …

Navigating Feedback In Collaborative Writing: The Impact Of Student Backgrounds And Expectations On Transitions To New Academic And Social Spaces, Lindsey Gruber, María Fernández–Agüero

Journal of Response to Writing

This article examines how international students navigate feedback from a supervisor while working on a group writing project in a diverse English medium of instruction (EMI) bachelor’s program at a public university in Denmark, where no formalized writing or language support resources are offered in the students’ first year of instruction. Data were collected in qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 11 students who were identified through a survey of a first-year bachelor of arts cohort. Results from the survey showed that despite using a supervision model of education, few students perceived changes in feedback compared to their secondary school experiences, and …

Editors' Introduction, Betsy Gilliland, Lucie Moussu

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

Has Politics Always Been Like This?, Tyler Bernius

The Penguin Review

There are some things that I, even as someone relatively new to politics, know are not normal–the blatant disregard of the Constitution, the seemingly rapid collapse of checks and balances, and the twisting and extending of presidential powers, to name a few. What is not clear to me, however, is whether people's reactions, attitudes, and interactions towards politics have always been this way. Growing up, I imagined politicians were respectable people who worked in the best interests of our country and who, even when disagreements did arise, settled problems with structured deliberation. I assumed voters looked at politics with logic …

Melody Of Wrath: A Retelling Of The Pied Piper, India Raye Sorensen

Theses and Dissertations

Melody of Wrath is a young adult fairy tale retelling of the Pied Piper legend centered on fifteen-year-old antihero Magnus. Driven by grief and rage after the massacre of his people, Magnus wields music as dangerous magic to summon a plague of rats and exact revenge on a corrupt city. The novel follows his morally complex journey from vengeance through compromise to a final test inside a transformative mountain, where he confronts the cost of retribution and the uncertain possibility of redemption. Drawing on folktale scholarship, archetypal theory, and literary antiheroes such as Hamlet and Edmond Dantès, this project uses …

Swosu Research And Scholarly Activity Fair 2026, Swosu Office Of Sponsored Programs

SWOSU Research and Scholarly Activity Fair Programs

On behalf of the University Research and Scholarly Activity Committee (URSAC) and the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, we are pleased to welcome you to the Thirty-Fourth SWOSU Research and Scholarly Activity Fair.

Bright Star: A Scenic Design, Sariah M, Roberts

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

This thesis documents the process and paperwork of the scenic design and ends with a reflection on how the process affected the final product.

Director, Bobby Pieranunzi

Stage Manager, Savannah Stermer

Lighting Designer, Dean Bressler

Costume Designer, Jamie Bullins

Technical Directors, Bryce Allen, Hayden Honomichl, and Shelby Hindman

Thesis advisor: JD Madsen

The Effects Of Visual Supports On The Acquisition Of Guitar Chords, Cole S. Jahna

Thesis Projects

There is a current literature gap in applied behavior analysis (ABA) and music-based leisure activities. This study utilized a multiple-probe design to evaluate the effects of visual supports on the guitar fretboard combined with behavioral skills training (BST) to teach correct strumming and finger placement of three guitar chords (i.e., E, C, and G) to a neurodivergent adult. By using a task analysis, the strum and each individual finger placement were scored as correct or incorrect during each chord trial. Three chords that were under 50% accuracy in baseline were selected for the intervention. The intervention was introduced sequentially to …

Competition And Community In Marx’S Alienation Theory: Addressing 21st Century Social Isolation Through A Laclauian Lens, Brett J. Zimmerman

Theses

Capitalism reorients human priorities by necessitating socio-economic competition and tying the preeminent priority of survival to the rate at which one accumulates material resources. The orientation of wage as the only means to survival has replaced the need for the working class to form tribes, build inter-group solidarity, and engage in their communities, resulting in a less fulfilling society. Marx is traditionally conceptualized as a political or economic thinker, and while much of his political and economic thought will be useful supplementary material, in Section I, I will be viewing Marx through a more interpersonal lens. The section will take …

Lanthorn, Vol. 60, No. 15, April 20, 2026, Grand Valley State University

Volume 60, August 4, 2025 – April 20, 2026

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Decolonizing The Academic Library: Examining The Successful Indigenization Of Ubc And Unm’S Library Services, Emily T. Villars

School of Information Student Research Journal

This article examines decolonization and indigenization initiatives at two academic libraries: the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the University of New Mexico (UNM). It asks how these institutions have implemented indigenization in their libraries and what lessons can inform broader reconciliation work across North America. Through a comparative lens, it analyzes how national and organizational frameworks, such as the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA-FCAB) Truth and Reconciliation Report and Recommendations and the American Indian Library Association’s (AILA) organizational goals, can shape these efforts. The study highlights three core strategies: decolonizing access and classification, transforming library spaces, and expanding …

Book Review: Academic Librarian Burnout: Causes And Responses Edited By Christina Holm, Ana Guimaraes, And Nashieli Marcano, Brianna Gaffney

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Books And Media

Appalachia

Reviews of: AMC Southern New Hampshire Trail Guide, 6th Edition; Long Trail Guide, 29th Edition; Letters from the Mountain, edited by Steve Chase and Brad Meiklejohn; In My Boots, by Amanda K. Jaros; White Pines, by Jane English

Letters

Appalachia

More musings on smartphones in the mountains. Praise for Katie Ives’s Appalachia Summer/Fall 2025 story, “Burning Solitudes.” Longtime Appalachian Mountain Club members share memories of former membership practices in response to Christine Woodside’s Appalachia Summer/Fall 2025 essay, “A Look Back at the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Long-Ago Membership Practices.”