Digital Commons Network^™

Who Owns Land, Who Owns Language? Challenging The Commercialization Of Indigenous Language Data, Matthew Riemland

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

As Indigenous scholars and activists have pointed out, the commercialization of Indigenous language data resembles the historical and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous land. Using Mayan languages as a case study, this article illustrates the process by which digital advertising platforms – Google and Meta – appropriate and benefit commercially from Indigenous language data, drawing parallels with the dispossession of Indigenous land. It identifies the significant costs of this commercialization to Indigenous communities, including the lack of compensation for the Indigenous language data’s commercial value, the distortion of Indigenous communities’ linguistic and cultural representation online, and the reinforcement of extractive relationships …

La Violencia: Family Stories Of Labor, War, And Migration, Gabriela Merida

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Gabriela Merida, a doctoral student at the University of Albany and a child of Guatemalan Maya refugees, interviews her grandmother and father about their lives in Guatemala and their subsequent experiences as migrants in the United States. Through life history interviews with each of them, Merida examines how foreign intervention shaped the economic and political realities that compelled them to migrate. She employs Giovanni Batz’s (2024) concept of the four invasions as an analytic frame to demonstrate how the historical arc of colonization, the plantation economy, the Guatemalan Civil War, and capitalism produce compounding forms of structural and quotidian violence …

My Experience As A Mayan Language Interpreter, Misael Itzep

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Misael discusses his experiences as a court interpreter for K’iche’ migrants in the United States. He has witnessed that “many of my compatriots don't consider that driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, fleeing after an accident, leaving a minor alone at home ‘for a moment’, hitting their partner, etc., has serious repercussions under the law in the United States, something that rarely has legal consequences in Guatemala. For example, in Guatemala, many driving laws aren’t enforced, such as the requirement to wear a seatbelt or to stop at a red traffic light. In contrast, laws are enforced in …

Importance Of Maya Culinary Traditions In Cultural Identity, Claudia Pacay

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Elder women play a crucial role in preserving Mayan identity through food, serving as the primary keepers and transmitters of traditional culinary knowledge. Through everyday cooking and special ceremonial meals, they pass down ancestral recipes, techniques, and the symbolic meanings of ingredients to younger generations. These foods are deeply connected to Mayan history, agriculture, spirituality, and community life — such as the use of native maize, traditional grinding methods, and dishes prepared for rituals and celebrations. By teaching children and grandchildren how to prepare these foods and explaining when and why they are eaten, elder women help maintain cultural continuity …

Parks Coble, Jr., Unl History; Chinese Nationalists & Business, Chinese-Japanese Relations, Mark A. Griep, Parks M. Coble Jr.

UNL ORCA Interview Series

Dr. Parks Coble, Jr. was awarded the ORCA in 2005. He was born in Waterloo, South Carolina in 1946 but he grew up in Columbia. He earned his bachelor’s in history at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Next, he traveled 740 miles northwest to earn his doctorate at the University of Illinois in Champaign. In 1976, he became an assistant professor of history at the University of Nebraska, where he quickly rose through the ranks. His early work focused on the relationship between Chinese business elites and leaders of the Chinese National Government movement during a very interesting …

Evaluating Gender Equity In The Berenstain Bears Picture Books, Christy Tisnawijaya, Geni Kurniati

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

Picture books serve as a foundational medium in early childhood education, utilizing interrelated visual and verbal elements to foster linguistic, cognitive, and social development. Despite their pedagogical utility, certain literary works inadvertently perpetuate traditional gender roles, constraining children's conceptualizations of identity. This study evaluates gender representation within eleven selected titles of The Berenstain Bears series. Employing a qualitative multimodal content analysis, the study integrates Butler's gender performativity framework (1990), Callow's multimodal narrative approach (2020), and Adam and Harper's evaluative criteria (2021) to examine how domestic, social, and recreational roles are constructed. This study offers novelty by establishing a dual-lens multimodal …

Eksplorasi Pemanfaatan Aplikasi Miraa Berbasis Transkripsi Ai Dalam Pembelajaran Menyimak Bahasa Mandarin, Dewi Permatasari Mulyono, Aiga Ventivani, Iwa Sobara, Aisyah Yasmin, Aulia Miftahul Jannah, Keiza Jasmine Aprilanadja

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

This study explores the use of Miraa, an AI-based transcription application, in Mandarin listening instruction and students’ responses to its use in a Chinese Comprehensive 2 course. A descriptive qualitative approach was employed involving 21 students from the Mandarin Language Education Program at Universitas Negeri Malang. Data were collected through classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with 10 purposively selected students, documentation, and exercise scores as supporting data. The data were analyzed through data condensation, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification, supported by source and technique triangulation. The findings indicate that Miraa was used as multimodal scaffolding by integrating audio, automatic …

Our Heritage Vol Ii 2026, Ana Iraheta, Jake R. Turcotte, Siobhan Lahiff

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

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Ana C. Iraheta and Jake R. Turcotte (Editors)

Siobhan Lahiff (Illustrator) "

Más Que Saltos: Patinar Me Hace Feliz/More Than Jumps: Skating Makes Me Happy, Amelia Costa

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

Skater changes her goals, works hard, and finds new joy.

Por Siempre En Mi Corazón/Forever In My Heart, Valeria Barrón

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

A young woman honors her late friend with love and tradition.

Los Abuelos Viven Para Siempre/Grandparents Live Forever, Mariana Padilla

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

A young woman misses her grandpa, remembers his love, and applies his lessons every single day.

Una Historia Sobre Cultura, Familia Y Sueños/A Story About Culture, Family, And Dreams, Roseline Tavarez Cepeda

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

Young immigrant celebrates culture, overcomes fear, and shares her story.

La Pequeña Defensora/The Little Advocate, Krystal Cuello Samper

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

Krystal faces challenges, uses bilingualism to help others and grow.

Mi Loca Mundaza A Connecticut/My Crazy Move To Connecticut, Luciana Ybarra

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

Moving from Hawaii to Connecticut taught values, adaptation, and cultural respect.

Cuando No Entendía El Por Qué/When I Didn't Understand Why, Nancy Nuñez

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

Nancy moved to a new country, learned English with effort, and discovered how valuable education is.

Camino Al Corazón/A Choice From The Heart, Daniela Montoya

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

Daniela felt unsure about her future, but chose to care for others and found her calling.

Carta Para Mi Tierra/Letter To My Country, Britnnie Minaya

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

Britnnie misses her country, values her culture and her memories.

Barreras Rotas/Broken Barriers, Rachel Barrón

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

María faces change, grows through challenges, and honors her parents’ sacrifices.

Aprendí A Querer Mi Nombre/I Learned To Love My Name, Cici Martinez Osorio

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

Citlally learns to love her name and value her culture.

The Method And The Machinery: Gloria Steinem, India, And The Cold War Making Of American Second Wave Feminsim, 1956-1972, Rashida Shafiq

History Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that Gloria Steinem became one of the most visible feminists of her generation because two political inheritances — postcolonial India and the Cold War liberal United States — converged in a single career. In 1957 and 1958, on a Chester Bowles Asian Fellowship, Steinem spent eighteen months in India, where she moved from elite intellectual circles in Delhi to Gandhian and Sarvodaya peace work in the villages of Ramnad. Walking with Bhoodan fieldworkers through caste-riot-stricken communities, she absorbed a repertoire of organizing practices — listening across difference, lateral and leaderless structure, decision by consensus, and the conversion …

Bekizine: A Zine Featuring Selected Queer Artists And Narratives, Daniel D. Sullano, Alex Ayson, Arianna Atas, Renee Sophia Caponong, Merix Kobi Blancaflor, Fernando R. Lacson

DLSU Arts Congress Conference Proceedings

Media serves as a powerful medium for shaping cultural norms and self-perception. Despite increasing visibility in Philippine media, LGBTQ+ representation remains dominated by metropolitan-centric narratives and reductive tropes that overlook the nuanced realities of provincial queer life. The study explored how BEKIZINE, a community-centered zine created by and for LGBTQ+ individuals aged 18–30 in Cavite, can serve as alternative media for self-expression, community building, and historical preservation. Adopting a practice-based, mixed-methods approach, the study integrates Queer Theory, Safe Space Theory, and Alternative Media Theory through semi-structured interviews with local queer artists and individuals, followed by zine launch evaluation surveys. Qualitative …

Bikolearn: Enhancing Bicol Language Proficiency Among Heritage Learners, Nathalie T. Lim-Cheng, Mark E. Abergos, Joshua H. Baccaro, Edward E. Tab, Christian A. Dela Peña

DLSU Arts Congress Conference Proceedings

Heritage learners are individuals with cultural ties to a language but also who lack proficiency in them, therefore often struggling to maintain their linguistic heritage. This is a common challenge for Filipino Bicol Language learners, especially those who grew up outside the region. This paper presents BikoLearn, a new web application designed to help heritage learners acquire the Bikol Language starting at the A1 beginner level. The application, which is designed first for mobile phones, mixes gamification features with relevant cultural content to make learning accessible. Through formatted lessons, interactive quizzes, and progress tracking presented in a gamified format, BikoLearn …

Kapwa Beckett: Co-Performance, Pakikipagkapwa, And Relational Meaning-Making In Philippine Stagings Of Samuel Beckett, Christian Gabriel Tolentino

DLSU Arts Congress Conference Proceedings

This reflective-practice study examines how kapwa and pakikipagkapwa emerged through translation, rehearsal, staging, and reception in three Philippine productions of Samuel Beckett: Endgame (2016), Happy Days (2019), and the devised classroom piece Beckett, Godot & Us Waiting (2023). Using comparative production analysis and a dialogical co-performance orientation drawn from Dwight Conquergood, I analyze rehearsal exercises, adaptation notes, production materials, staging decisions, and remembered performer-audience encounters. The analysis identifies distinct relational practices across the productions: collaborative localization and sensory dramaturgy in Endgame; negotiated media adaptation and mediated intimacy in Happy Days; and devising, Meisner repetition, physical trust, and shared post-pandemic waiting …

Flows That Teach: Multimodal Hip-Hop Pedagogy For Equity In Special Education, Camille O'Quin, Sara Jozwik

Journal of the Arts and Special Education

Hip-Hop can be more than a soundtrack played at home, it can be a bridge between culture, language, and learning at school. This article shows how Hip-Hop pedagogy, translanguaging, and code-meshing can support students with disabilities, especially those who speak African American Vernacular English (AAVE), in the classroom setting. Grounded in culturally relevant pedagogy and translanguaging theory, the approach uses rhythm, storytelling, and performance to build narrative fluency, language awareness, and confidence. Examples include students drafting rap verses about personal experiences, holding structured cypher circles to practice turn-taking and self-expression, and blending AAVE with Mainstream American English in writing for …

We Are All In This Together Now: Exploring Community Based Partnerships Focusing On Hip-Hop Based Education, William C. Hunter, Tarol Page Clements, Gregory Washington

Journal of the Arts and Special Education

This article explores a community-based collaborative partnership between three Hip-Hop educational nonprofits, Upward Light Community Cyphers, Project STAND (Social-Emotional, Transition, Academic and Network Developing), and the Center for the Advancement of Youth Development (CAYD), all focused on mental health support for youth, and a public-school program that has serves students with and without exceptionalities. The goal shared by all organizations involved is enhanced educational access and engagement for students with and without exceptionalities. Rooted in the core elements of Hip-Hop — emceeing, DJing/music production, breakdancing, and graffiti art, the collaborative partnership has offered culturally sustaining, arts-integrated instruction that supports both …

Tubuh Yang Mengingat (The Body Remembers): Ecology, Ritual, And Embodied Memory In Contemporary Cirebon Mask Performance, Prameswari Mrajabwana

Theses and Dissertations

Tubuh yang Mengingat (The Body Remembers) is a single-channel, site-specific performance film set across coastal and extractive landscapes in Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia. Reinterpreting the five transformations of Cirebonese mask dance—Panji, Pamindo, Rumyang, Tumenggung, and Kelana—the project examines how colonial extraction, ecological deterioration, and systems of social regulation continue to shape embodied experience materially and somatically. Drawing from Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action and Stacy Alaimo’s notion of trans-corporeality, the work approaches body, land, technology, and history as relationally entangled rather than separate entities. Through live biodata sonification generated from environmental sensors and bodily movement, the film establishes …

Delirious Pink, Reuben Gordon

Theses and Dissertations

How to enliven a tradition as accomplished as painting? With the spirit of New York City and the techniques of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting as my backbone, I look to my friends, lovers, and fellow artists to form a thesis defined by love, color, feeling, and individuality.

Queer Postsecular Conocimiento: Anzaldúan Readings Of Time, Spirituality, And Transformation In Nugent, Vuong, And Herrera, Joshua A. Swem

Theses and Dissertations

An overreliance on secularism within the field of queer theory and a denial of spiritual epistemologies prevent deep, alternative, and transformative strategies of analyzing literature. It can regurgitate oppressive ideology in academia. In this work, I synthesize Gloria Anzaldúa’s theoretical concepts of mestiza consciousness, nepantla, la facultad, and el cenote with José Esteban Muñoz’s queer temporality and futurity as a framework to engage with literary texts in queer, postsecular ways, freeing up fresh insights and polysemic perspectives. I argue that in  "Smoke, Lilies, and Jade" by Richard Bruce Nugent, Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri …

Decentring Philosophical Education In African Tertiary Education: Integrating Global Perspectives In The Classroom, Isaac Mutelo

Comparative Philosophy

The philosophical discourse has been dominated by Western perspectives, an approach that continues to influence curriculum design and delivery in higher education. The historical dominance of the Western philosophical canon in university curricula has contributed to the marginalisation of other equally significant philosophical traditions from Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Indigenous cultures. This approach has contributed significantly to the narrow and limited scope and relevance of philosophy as an academic field globally. Rather than advocating for the dominance and superiority of the Western-centred curriculum, this paper acknowledges the centrality of integrating global philosophical perspectives in the philosophy curriculum and discourse …

Engaging Intercultural Philosophy In The Classroom: A Methodological Proposal, Gloria Luque Moya

Comparative Philosophy

The exclusion of non-Western philosophies from university curricula has been a persistent feature of academic philosophy, both in the United States and Europe. This marginalization reflects an enduring assumption that philosophy is a uniquely Western enterprise, originating in ancient Greece and developed exclusively within European traditions. This article challenges that assumption by arguing that the teaching of intercultural philosophy is not merely a pedagogical issue, but an urgent necessity in the context of globalization and cross-cultural exchange. Focusing on the limited presence of non-Western philosophical traditions in Spanish university programs, the article first analyzes the structural asymmetry in the historiography …