Digital Commons Network^™

Post-Anthropocene Provocations: Human-Sized Scholars’ Rocks, Cronenbergian Flesh Caves And Zen Garden Design Cues For A Future Proof Re(Image)Ining, Brenton Rossow, Darren Tynan

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This research explores concertinaing past, present and future interventional creative and pedagogical practices to address the challenges of the Post-Anthropocene era. We argue that the Post-Anthropocene is marked by biotechnological entanglements, environmental violence and digital overstimulation. The discussions herein critique a hyperattentive achievement society characterised by a scattering of attention, a near-constant screen-mediated stream of digital material and tasks and the commodification of leisure time. Enlisting Byung-Chul Han’s concept of hyperattention and themes and motifs from David Cronenberg’s films, the authors propose “FUTURE PROOF re(image)ining” as a collaborative Cli-Fi narrative concept. The project reimagines objects from an initial art installation …

From Pagan Chieftains To Christian Kings: Shaping Medieval Nordic Political Culture, Carissa Chinnery

Voces Novae

No abstract provided.

Extractivism And Water Crisis In The Moroccan Draa Oasis: Global South Reflections On Responsibility And Resistance, Ahmed El Khatabi

Journal of Maya Heritage

Abstract. The Draa Oasis in southeastern Morocco is experiencing severe water scarcity, driven by climate change and intensified by the expansion of watermelon agribusiness and desert tourism. This article explores how external investors, empowered by national agricultural policies, have disrupted traditional water governance systems rooted in collective management. Through ethnographic fieldwork involving interviews, focus groups, and spatial mapping, the study examines the socio-environmental consequences of groundwater depletion and land commodification. It argues that investors fail to assume ethical accountability for the ecological degradation they cause, despite being aware of the oasis’s fragile ecosystem. Meanwhile, local communities and civil society actors …

Balat, Maskara, At Wika: Karanasan Ng Isang Dayuhan Sa Pilipinas, Jc Gaillard

Dalumat: Multikultural at Multidisiplinaryong E-Journal sa Araling Filipino

Ang punang ito ay tungkol sa karanasan ng may-akda na dayuhan at kung bakit naging abnormal siya dahil marunong siyang mag-Filipino at Kapampangan sa bansang Pilipinas. Samakatwid, ang pinakatanong ng artikulong ito ay ano ba talaga ang pamantayan at normal sa relasyon ng Pilipinx at dayuhang puti pag dating sa wika? Sa karanasan ng may-akda, naging sentido kumon na normal ang mag-Ingles at abnormal ang mag-Filipino at mag-iba pang katutubong wika. Ganito kalalim ang internalisasyon at normalisasyon ng Ingles bilang wika ng Pilipinx sa harapan ng dayuhang puti sa Pilipinas. Kaya pag dating sa wika, kayumanggi ang balat pero puti …

The Paradoxical Effect: How Destruction Of Religious Buildings In Ukraine Undermined Russian Propaganda Narratives (2022-2024), Oleksandr Kostiuk, Fedir Vlasenko, Vitalii Turenko

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This research examines the paradoxical relationship between the destruction of religious buildings in Ukraine during the Russian invasion and the effectiveness of Russian propaganda narratives. Using a mixed-methods approach combining statistical data, sociological surveys, and document analysis, we investigate how the systematic targeting of Ukrainian religious sites by Russian forces has produced effects contrary to those likely intended. The research reveals that instead of undermining Ukrainian national identity, the destruction of churches and other religious buildings has catalyzed profound transformations in Ukraine's religious landscape, accelerated the transition of parishes from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) to the Orthodox Church …

Assessment Of Geomorphological Hazards In The Rawanduz District Using Modern Digital Techniques, Amer Mahmoud Abdel Karim

Uruk Journal of Human Sciences

This research aims to assess the geomorphological hazards in the Rawanduz district, a region characterized by its rugged mountainous terrain located in northern Iraq, specifically in Erbil Governorate. Due to its diverse topography and high natural risk, the Rawanduz district requires a thorough analysis to identify potential hazards such as landslides and erosion. The research relies on the analysis of geological, topographical, and climatic data using Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. The primary goal of this assessment is to develop strategies for risk mitigation and disaster management in the Rawanduz district by identifying sensitive areas and providing recommendations for urban …

The Urban Deterioration Of Housing In The City Of Holy Karbala (The Abbasiyah District As A Model), Nuha Nima Muhammad Al- Buarbi

Uruk Journal of Human Sciences

This study aims to identify the phenomenon of urban deterioration of heritage housing units in the study area and diagnose the most significant and evident causes. Heritage homes suffer from continuous deterioration, which poses a significant risk that neither the residents nor the concerned authorities have fully realized. Thus, this study came to understand the reality of urban housing deterioration in the Abbasiyah District (Eastern and Western) as a case study. It seeks to interpret and analyze the main reasons behind the decay of its residential neighborhoods using advanced statistical methods to find relationships and correlations between research variables. These …

An Alternative To The Liberal World Order: China, Brics, And Middle East Diplomacy, Brice Tseen Fu Lee, Kotchaphop Kornphetcharat, Juan Pablo Sims

Journal Of Middle East and Islamic Studies

This paper explores how China and BRICS are emerging as strategic alternatives to the liberal international order, particularly in the realm of diplomacy and mediation for periphery states in the Middle East. Drawing on a realist theoretical framework, the study argues that these platforms offer pragmatic, interest-based avenues for engagement that contrast sharply with the conditionalities and normative expectations of Western-led institutions. Through case studies such as China’s mediation in the Iran–Saudi Arabia normalization and the expansion of BRICS+ to include Middle Eastern actors, the paper demonstrates how sovereignty, non-interference, and multipolarity have become central organizing principles for a new …

Representing Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Form, And Ideology (2024), By Robert T. Tally, Jr., Andrew Higgins

Journal of Tolkien Research

Nook review, by Andrew Higgins, of Representing Middle-earth: Tolkien, Form, and Ideology (2024), by Robert T. Tally, Jr.

A Layin On Of Hands: Black Feminist Healing Arts As Wake Work, Lei'anna Gladden

Theses - ALL

A Layin on of Hands: Black Feminist Healing Arts as Wake Work explores the work of two Black femme artists who engage in ritualized theater performance. This thesis examines the creations of Oakland-based artist Amara Tabor Smith, a ritual dance theater artist, and New York-based theater ceremonialist Ebony Noelle Golden. The project examines each artist’s unique artistic and spiritual practices as forms of immaterial, emotional, psychic, and social intervention in the afterlives of slavery, which impact Black life. Methodologically, this thesis depends on oral histories, performance analysis, and participant observation to document and explore the emotional, ecological, and spiritual effects …

Where The Soul Belongs: The Search For A Meaningful Life Through Han Funerary Art — With A Focus On The Mawangdui T-Shaped Painting And Jinqueshan Han Tomb Silk Painting, Tong Su

Theses - ALL

Perceptions of life and death are deeply embedded in the artistic expressions of a society, shaped by its cultural, philosophical and social environment. This study explores how funerary paintings from the early Han dynasty - the Mawangdui T-shaped painting and the Jinqueshan Han tomb silk painting - reflect evolving views of life and the afterlife under changing social conditions. While both paintings derive from the funerary traditions of Chu culture and Daoist beliefs in immortality, their differences highlight a significant shift: the Mawangdui T-Shaped Painting emphasizes ascent to the heavenly world through nature worship and ancestral connections, while the Jinqueshan …

Living Heritage, Resilience And Ethically Informed Infrastructures In Malawi, Martha B. Lerski, Frank Puluputu Mwale

Publications and Research

Rooted in a rural community’s needs, this paper explores how historically, and ethically informed infrastructures can support community engagement towards identification, documentation, and dissemination of local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge relating to climate change. The paper examines climate adaptation and sustainability issues through the lenses of community organizing and Library & Information Science best practices. It draws on a growing body of literature identifying a role for expanded epistemological and subject discipline perspectives. While the impacts of climate on material culture are increasingly recognized, intangible, and biocultural heritage have not received as much attention. Living heritage traditions and knowledge systems …

Front Matter, Arthit Jiamrattanyoo

Journal of Letters

No abstract provided.

Dr. John Olthoff Reflects On 36 Years At Dordt, Sarah Moss

The Voice

No abstract provided.

Interview With Robert Cliver, Jacey Terrill

What Happened Here

This is a transcript of an oral history interview with Robert Cliver, a professor of History at Cal Poly Humboldt for eighteen years. He is highly critical of the administration’s choices during the protest and greatly supports the protesters, not only in their right to protest but in their messaging. He explains his negative views on the Israeli government, while also emphasizing that the protesters did not act from antisemitic sentiments. Much of his interview comes from the perspective of a historian, and knowing this document may be used by historians in the future, he extensively explains his reasoning. He …

Korean Pioneers: The History, Identity, And Legacy Of The First Korean Americans, Evan Gravdahl

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

In examining Korean American history, the starting date for their arrival is conventionally recognized as 1903, when roughly 7,000 laborers migrated to Hawaii. This first wave consisted primarily of young men, many of whom didn’t plan to stay in the US. However, as their stays continued and other Koreans continued migrating, they began developing a unique cultural identity within the United States. This paper aims to determine the unique identities that developed during this first wave of immigration between 1903 and 1945, how they assimilated, and how they interacted with other ethnic minorities and later waves of Korean immigrants.

The …

A Modern Approach To Classifying Medieval Latin Scripts, Robert L. Lane Jr, Rafia Mirza, Robert Slater

SMU Data Science Review

Paleography, the study of historical handwriting, is essential for preserving societal understanding of cultural, social, and legal frameworks from the past. Medieval manuscripts, often exhibiting refined craftsmanship, present unique challenges to modern readers due to differences in handwriting conventions and the absence of standardized punctuation and spaces. These texts hold valuable insights into the evolution of written communication, literacy, and language development. However, interpreting them requires specialized knowledge and technological solutions. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) can be leveraged to classify scripts, an important step in Historical Document analysis. These models extract and analyze hierarchical features from images, addressing inconsistencies in …

الأخلاق في الديانات الوضعية في الهند, Ahmad M. Z. Alotaibi, Marwa Kharma

Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Research in Higher Education مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية للبحوث في التعليم العالي

هدف المقال تجلية موضوع الأخلاق في أديان الهند: الهندوسية، والبوذية، والسيخية، والجينية. وجاءت هذه الدراسة في تمهيد وأربعة مباحث: جاء التمهيد لبيان تأثر الأديان الهندية بالهندوسية، وجاء المبحث الأول: للحديث عن الأخلاق في الديانة الهندوسية، وتناول فيه الحديث عن عدد من القضايا أبرزها نظام الطبقات الهندوسي، وجاء المبحث الثاني للحديث عن الأخلاق في الديانة البوذية، وتناول الباحثان فيه موقف الديانة البوذية من النظام الطبقي ومدى محاربتها له، وجاء المبحث الثالث للحديث عن الديانة السيخية ومحاربته للنظام الطبقي والموقف من المرأة والحديث عن آليات محاربة الطبقية في المجتمع السيخي، ثم جاء المبحث الرابع للحديث عن الأخلاق في الديانة الجينينة، وأنها وإن …

Exploring Students’ Word Stress In Speaking: Does Ethnicity Matter?, Kardi Nurhadi, Diyenti Rusdin, Indah Werdiningsih, Nunung Suryati

Journal of English and Applied Linguistics

In recent years, many studies have examined the impact of word stress on speaking, but few have looked into how multiethnic students handle word stress in pronunciation. This gap is particularly noticeable in Indonesia, where the rich diversity of ethnicities and local dialects presents both unique challenges and opportunities for English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners. This study aims to fill that gap by examining how the ethnic backgrounds of Indonesian students from Sulawesi influence their word stress. Twelve students (6 males, 6 females, aged 19–21) from four different ethnic groups were recruited as participants. Data were gathered through interviews, read-aloud recordings, lecturer …

Review: The Year Of Miss Agnes, Rachel Schwedt, Rachel Schwedt

Ages 10-12

Acceptance, Caring, Community, Cooperation, Creativity, Dignity, Encouragement, Inspiration, Pride, Respect, Self-acceptance

Review: My America: A Poetry Atlas Of The United States, Rachel Schwedt, Janice Delong

Ages 10-12

Appreciation of nature, Citizenship, Community, Diversity, Ethnic pride, Knowledge, Patriotism, Wonder

Nepaliness As Assemblage: Diasporic Belonging, Colorism, And Caste In The Associational Life Of Nepali Migrants In Florida, Shuvechha Ghimire Sharma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The research fundamentally challenges romanticized ideas of migration—shedding older inequalities, idealizing “leveling up,” and being a part of “unified diasporic communities”—and unmasks a rather uneasy, far more intricate reality: the preexisting sociocultural and political structures and identities are not shed, rather actively reproduced and rigorously, often consciously, reconfigured within the transnational diasporic spaces. As such, the research reveals that Nepali diasporic associations in Florida play a vital role in perpetuating and reshaping social inequalities and contested national identities, significantly impacting transnational dynamics. The work contends that caste hierarchies persist in structuring associational life, influencing participation and resource distribution. Concurrently, colorism …

Reparative Cuteness: Summer Camp Island’S Obfuscated Streaming Distribution Reveals Our Dependence On Monetary Care, James R. Hanjian

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Summer Camp Island exhibits the culmination of the animation styles and ethics of dependent care produced within contemporary Cartoon Network animations. As part of the production cycle of Warner Bros. animated television programs following Adventure Time, Julia Pott’s animated program depicts networks of collaborative care informed by the lived realities of the creator-animators. By employing a reparative reading of the narratives and cute aesthetics which appear in the program, I maintain that the care networks presented within the diegesis of Summer Camp Island depict alternatives to the precarious economic and industrial realities that actively shaped the show’s production and distribution. …

Planches, Cases, Bulles Entre Les Langues : Représentations Des Langues Dans Le Roman Graphique « Le Piano Oriental » De Zeina Abirached, Chiara Denti

Al-Kīmiyā

Published in France by Casterman in 2015, Le piano oriental is the fifth graphic novel by French Lebanese comic artist Zeina Abirached. Like her previous graphic works, this book is part of the autobiographical comics movement, although it takes a slightly different perspective. The author is no longer dealing with the facts of collective history, recounting the Beirut of her childhood ravaged by civil war, but she explores her linguistic biography, reflecting on her bilingualism and her dual heritage. Combining images and words, Le piano oriental retraces the author’s linguistic journey and the experience of a mother tongue that is …

S’Approprier L’Objet De Son Transfert Ou Quand Un Poète Traduit Un Poète : Baudelaire Par Giorgio Caproni, Gianluca Leoncini

Al-Kīmiyā

Without being iconoclastic, Giorgio Caproni, a poet who translates the reverse journey of another poet, appropriates the object of his transfer as much as he reports on it. In the rewriting of this pre-set universe recalling elsewhere outside history, the individual who wishes to appease his troubles may seek to forget, through the use of the almost hypnotic power of the reflections of meridian lights, marine sounds and delectable smells, that Evil is everywhere and that the human being participates in its cruelty and absurdity.

English title
Appropriating the Object of One’s Transfer or When a Poet Translates a Poet: …

So Who Gets To Be Modern? Jadidism And Reform In Late Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Century Russia, Grant Douglas Linville

University Honors Theses

Jadidism was a sociocultural reformist project from the 1880s to 1920s developed by Muslim intellectuals in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The Jadidist movement derives its name from the "new-method" (usul-al Jadid) schools that spread Jadid pedagogy, which revolved around the inclusion of secular topics and Western knowledge as well as instruction in local, Tatar, and Russian languages, in addition to the already present religious studies accompanied by Arabic and Persian taught in the Islamic educational institutions the maktab and madrasa (primary and higher education respectively). Over time Jadidism grew to encompass a host of societal …

Where's The Dim Sum? Art, Oral History, And The Chinese American Diaspora In Portland, Or, Rayli Dornan

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines the history, transformation, and contemporary significance of Portland's Chinatown through an oral history framework, emphasizing the voices of Chinese American artists. Beginning with a comprehensive historical overview from the mid-nineteenth-century Gold Rush migrations and railroad labor to twentieth-century exclusion, dispossession under urban renewal, and the late-twentieth-century dispersal into suburbs, the thesis traces how structural racism and policy shaped both the physical landscape and communal life of Oregon's Chinese diaspora. Through in-depth interviews with local artists, this research aims to illuminate how individual experiences of identity, belonging, and creative expression navigate the tensions between heritage and adaptation.

Drawing …

Continuum Of Academic Collaboration: Issues Of Inconsistent Terminology In Multilingual Context, Cristo Leon Ph.D., James Lipuma Ph.D., Marcos O. Cabobianco, Maria B. Daizo

STEM for Success Resources

Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
1690-4524 (Online)

Cunning Commies, Dumb Democrats, And Exiled Germans: A Holistic Postmortem Of The 1948 Czechoslovak Coup D'État, Douglas Joys

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

The role played by the post-WWII expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia in catalyzing the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état has been underexplored in favor of the traditional narrative of an East-West clash between Czechoslovak democratic and communist parties backed by the United States and Soviet Union, respectively. Scholarship on the expulsion and the coup has on occasion brought up connections between the two events, albeit briefly and only as a small part of larger examinations of one of the two. The Eastern and Western forces at play in Czechoslovakia were undoubtedly key factors in the coup’s outcome: the end of …

The Magdala Moms Of La Jolla, Rebecca Shepard

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The Magdala Moms of La Jolla is a satirical novel set at The Magdala School, an elite Christian academy in La Jolla, California, where social status, curated faith, and community performance are indistinguishable. The story follows Mitzi Madigan, a brash, ambitious mother whose carefully constructed persona hides a troubling past. Her world begins to unravel when Caroline—a single mother working in construction—is granted a scholarship for her daughter, Emma, to attend Magdala.

As Emma enters the private school’s polished social ecosystem, she begins to uncover the secrets buried beneath the sun-drenched surface. The Mag Moms, a clique of hyper-polished, scripture-quoting …