Digital Commons Network^™

Revolutionary Petunias In The Hallways: Adultification, Identity, And Black Girls’ High School Experiences, Renee Niles

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how adultification, the racialized misperception of Black girls as more mature, responsible, and self-sufficient, shapes high school experiences and identity development. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory and Black feminist epistemology, the study draws on interviews with eight Black women to explore how these experiences are interpreted over time. The study conceptualizes adultification as a form of developmental governance, an ongoing structural process that regulates perception, behavior, and identity from adolescence into adulthood.

Twitteratura: Digital Social Reading And Active Reception Of Literary Texts In The Context Of Italian Contemporary Literature, Iuri Moscardi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores Digital Social Reading (DSR) as a novel mode of literary engagement, focusing on the Italian project Twitteratura, a series of social reading experiments conducted on Twitter (2012–2016) and later on the Betwyll app. The research situates Twitteratura within the intersection of Reader-Response Theory, Digital Humanities, Reception Studies, and Sociology of Literature, demonstrating how digital environments reshape the act of reading and interpretation. Through detailed analyses of four DSR projects centered on major twentieth-century Italian authors—Cesare Pavese, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, and Natalia Ginzburg—this dissertation argues that Twitteratura provides a concrete, data-rich demonstration of Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response …

Gremlin Theory: A Film Art Of Joe Dante, Frank Falisi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis seeks to establish the work of the filmmaker Joe Dante as a catalyzing and anarchic force let loose inside larger, dumber superstructures: linear narrativity, Hollywood, America, etc. It works to read the genre films he worked on—many of them made as popular entertainment for mainstream movie studios—as moments of actual subversion, allocating status quo (studio system) resources to create a biting-back against American imperial norms in the lingua franca of Marx and the Marx Brothers: gummy leisure-seeking stupidity and Gremlin transformation. This thesis seeks to argue that to understand Dante’s work is to understand pop transfiguration itself. This …

Conga Santiaguera: A Century Of Innovation And Competition, Nick Herman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Santiago de Cuba is home to the island’s biggest, oldest, and most famous carnival.  Any local resident will confirm that “sin conga no hay carnaval (without conga there is no carnival).” In Santiago, conga refers to a vibrant street procession, the music that drives it, and the ensemble that makes the music.  Conga Santiaguera: A Century of Innovation and Competition presents a musical history of the conga from roughly 1910 to 2010.  This project, https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/conga employs an eBook, musical analysis, oral histories, and audiovisual media to show how the conga has been constantly reinvigorated by innovation, competition, and Afro-Diasporic …

Beyond The Veil Of Modernity: René Guénon, Prophet Of The Metapolitical Imaginary, Frederic Colier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Heralded by some as one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, French metaphysician René Guénon (1886-1951) is also the controversial father of Primordial Tradition, a metaphysics designed to remedy the decline of Western civilization. Guénon viewed the West in the grip of a prolonged cycle of degeneration. He sought to implement a pseudo-authoritarian spiritual reset that required a total rejection of its Western intellectual heritage and an embrace of Eastern doctrines.

Focusing on his landmark book The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), the dissertation examines how Guénon implemented his controversial reset. After outlining the religious, cultural, and …

Heart And Blood, Nasreen Zankawah

ETDs from 2020-2029

Heart and Blood is a historical fiction, set in the 1890s colonial era in present-day Ghana, focusing on the royal family and two rival clans of the Dagbon Kingdom. At its center is Chentiwuni, the protagonist who shares a strained relationship with her father and king of Dagbon, Naa Dawuni Zulandi. She navigates life, barely conforming to traditions and rules and associates with people her father disapproves of. The rift between them deepens when Chenti falls in love with Yumzaa, a sub-chief from a rival clan and a prospective heir to the skin of Dagbon after Naa Dawuni. Chenti’s relationship …

With A Love So Hard And Filled With Defeat:' A Queer Reading Of Bruce Springsteen, Samuel Tucker Carden

ETDs from 2020-2029

Long an open, yet misinterpreted political artist, Bruce Springsteen has never shied away from calling out injustices through his songs. Over the course of his long career, he has used his platform to lyrically speak out against war, the brutality of American capitalism, and the struggles of marginalized people of all backgrounds. However, the potential queerness of his lyrics has remained an underdiscussed political aspect of his artistry for decades, especially in academic settings. Many of the themes that Springsteen returns to in his writing – the need to hide one’s true self, struggles with self-identity, the desperate desire to …

Teach In English Or Perish: A Phenomenological Inquiry Into The Lives Of Three Emi Educators, Michela Gronchi

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Teaching in English Medium Instruction (EMI) programs can significantly reshape educators’ professional identities particularly when English is not their first language. This article summarizes a previously published phenomenological study with three Italian EMI educators in educational linguistics. Drawing on creative fortune lines to trace their experiences, the study showed that participants’ disciplinary field played a central role in their lived identity, intersecting with issues of language teaching and native-speakerist ideologies. The findings also revealed a heightened awareness of multilingual competence across English and other languages, which contributed to identity formation, alongside a pronounced tension between their professional selves expressed in …

Black Language Matters: Capitalizing On Black English For Educational Success Through Linguistic And Cultural Competence Training, Fritz Lauriston

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

This dissertation explores the impact of culturally responsive professional development on K–12 educators’ perceptions and understanding of Black English, also known as African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The study responds to the longstanding marginalization of Black English in educational environments and its implications for academic equity, cultural identity, and student performance—particularly among African American learners. The central intervention, titled “Do You Understand Me? Linguistic and Cultural Competence Black English Professional Development,” was designed to increase teachers’ linguistic awareness, dismantle deficit perspectives, and promote inclusive instructional practices that validate students’ home language.

Using a mixed-method design, 59 certified educators participated in …

The History Of The Constitution Is Our Future., Maggie Blackhawk

Michigan Law Review

The Constitution of the United States establishes a government; it also stands as the fundamental law of a people. It shapes daily life, distributes power, and sets a direction for the future. And yet when we ask about the reach and meaning of the Constitution, we are increasingly told to look backward. The answers to our future are said to lie in the past.

Teaching For Liberation: Using Literature To Combat Oppression In Multilingual Classrooms, Gourika Sharma

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

This article explores the integration of resistance narratives and cultural identity into English literature curricula in multilingual classrooms, highlighting its potential to promote liberation pedagogy. Drawing on the principles of critical pedagogy, it argues that literature can act as a transformative tool to combat oppression, foster critical thinking, and enhance inclusivity. The study employs a qualitative approach, analyzing case studies, classroom practices, and curriculum frameworks to identify effective strategies for teaching literature in linguistically and culturally diverse settings. Key strategies include selecting texts that reflect themes of social justice and resilience, incorporating students' native languages to bridge comprehension gaps, and …

The Mystical Soundscape And The Functions Of Commentaries On Ibn Al-Fāriḍ’S (D. 632/1235) Naẓm Al-Sulūk, Sherine Mohsen Aboulwafa

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Naẓm al-Sulūk and its earliest commentaries by al-Farghānī (d. 700/1300) and al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291) through the analytical framework of the mystical soundscape. Rather than treating the poem and its commentaries as static texts, it argues that meaning in this corpus emerges as an experiential and perceptual event sustained through sound, silence, and reception. The mystical soundscape is conceptualized as comprising two interrelated domains: a silent soundscape, formed through reading, memory, imagination, and conceptual engagement; and an audible soundscape, formed through recitation, pronunciation, rhythm, and communal audition. These domains are linked by the experience of bewilderment …

Emotion In Absence: Omission, World War I, And Masculine Vulnerability In Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, Anna Murph

ETDs from 2020-2029

This thesis analyzes Ernest Hemingway’s depictions of male-male and male-female relationships in his collection of short stories, In Our Time. By comparing heterosexual and homosocial relationships, I explore how Hemingway’s depictions of male bonds are not only unique due to his famed terseness but also rooted in shared understanding, prompting a reconsideration of how male bonds are interpreted textually. I consider Hemingway’s use of omission and focus on how his minimalistic style lends to a reading of male-male relationships as more emotionally intimate than heterosexual relationships. When analyzing omission and relational dynamics through concepts such as gesture, touch, identity, and …

Language Attitudes And Stereotypes Condition The Processing Of Contact-Induced Linguistic Variants, Sonia Barnes, Whitney Chappell

Spanish Languages and Literatures Research and Publications

This study examines the effect of language attitudes and stereotypes on vowel perceptions by two groups of listeners from Asturias, Spain that differ in their relationship with the languages present in their communities: Spanish, the national majority language, and Asturian, the regional minority language. The responses of 165 participants from the Nalón Valley (a mining area in the region) were compared with those of 156 listeners from Gijón (the largest urban area) as they categorized words containing synthesized productions of Spanish [o] and Asturian [u] in a task that combined binary forced-choice identification and visual priming. The results of a …

Teaching Telemachus: Learning To Live And Lead In A Flawed World, Sherman J. Clark

Michigan Law Review

A review of The Odyssey By Homer. Translated by Emily Wilson.

From Seizure To Settlement: Liberated Africans, Imperial Law, And Labor In The Indian Ocean World, 1810–1860, Holly S. Mcfate

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between British antislavery, imperial law, and labor management in the western Indian Ocean during the first half of the nineteenth century. Centered on the 1821 capture and condemnation of the slave schooner Industry by HMS Menai, the study employs a microhistorical methodology to reconstruct the legal and administrative processes that governed the lives of Africans seized from slave ships after their liberation. Drawing upon Vice-Admiralty Court records, Colonial Office correspondence, naval logbooks, and administrative registers from The National Archives (UK) and the Mauritius Archives, the thesis follows the transition of captive Africans from maritime interception …

Linking (Imagined) Communities: World Language Students' Stereotypical Attributions To Native Speakers And Teachers Of German., Lucian Rothe

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Abstract This study explores language learners' stereotypical descriptions of native speakers (NSs) of German and their relationship with participants' perceptions of teachers of German. It expands motivation research that employs stereotypes to gain insight into university students' views of target language (TL) speakers (Rothe, 2022, 2025). Sixty‐seven learners of German and 43 learners of other world languages (WLs) pro vided responses about NSs and instructors, while also rating the stereotypes' perceived accuracy. Participants held various stereotypical notions about NSs, reflecting broader societal narratives. Learners of German pro vided more detailed stereotypical descriptions. Both groups considered favorable stereotypes as more accurate …

The Magic Wand: The Transformation Of Literary Journals And The Middle Class In Early Nineteenth-Century Germany, Charlotte Bayer

University Honors Theses

Compared to other products of German Romanticism, scholarship has almost entirely overlooked the magazine Wünschelruthe (1818). No in-depth, original research has been made on the magazine since 1929. Investigations into the Wünschelruthe have only been within the frame of its connection to more influential works and authors within the German canon or as digression in biographies on its main contributors, and these writings usually neglect the actual content in the magazine. From a catalogue of dozens of literary magazines produced in Germany during the late Enlightenment and Romantic eras, the Wünschelruthe is also one of a select few (if not …

Goddess In A Trash Can: Religious Ritual Disposal In New York City Public Parks, Zoe Oro-Hahn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Practitioners of Afro-Caribbean religions, including Santería, Vodou, Espiritismo, and Las 21 Divisiones, utilize the New York City Public Parks system to hold rituals, connect with spirits and ancestors, and dispose of religious remains leftover from trabajos (workings) and brujería (witchcraft). Utilizing photos from Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, my thesis considers the religious, political, social, and practical rationale behind this phenomenon, explores the rituals occurring, and provides policy suggestions that balance religious needs of practitioners with the safety and wellbeing of New York City’s parks.

Trans-Cyber Cinema: Digital Embodiment In Science-Fiction Films, Sophia R. Schrock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis aims to define the trans-cyber genre within cinema. By looking retroactively at a selection of nine films made across various decades and countries, this genre connects these films through their visualization and thematization of both trans and cyber embodiments, whereby the trans-cyber being emerges. Before the cinematic analysis and explanation of the three generic conventions selected for this thesis – transformation of body/gender; altered reality, memory, and temporality; and, radical death – the two intertwining theoretical frameworks will be established. This includes a brief summary of applicable transgender theory, and an introduction to cyborg theory (using Donna Haraway’s …

Gramsci’S ‘Democratic Philosopher’ And The Concept’S Foundations In Marxian Social Ontology, Eli Recht-Appel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis deals with the term ‘democratic philosopher’ from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. In order to lay the groundwork for my distinct interpretation of the ‘democratic philosopher,’ I begin by providing an overview of Gramsci’s theory of the role of intellectuals in civil and political society. I then argue that the ‘democratic philosopher’ emerges from Gramsci’s typology of intellectuals but is a category which is both temporally and ontologically distinct from his more well-known concept of ‘organic intellectuals.’ ‘Organic intellectuals,’ intellectuals who co-develop alongside their fundamental social group or class, occupy a variety of cultural and political roles in …

The New Middle Cinema: Aesthetic Restraint, The Urban Middle Class, And The Reconfiguration Of Mainstream Bollywood (2007–2017), Hasnatun Nabi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 2007 and 2017, a distinctive wave of mainstream Hindi films, termed here as the “New Middle Cinema”, employed aesthetic restraint to reconfigure Bollywood’s identity in response to a rapidly changing India. Rejecting the industry’s traditional spectacle, melodrama, and visual opulence, these films embraced naturalistic visuals, grounded performances, character‑driven narratives, and a muted color palette. Drawing on industrial analysis, close textual reading, and audience reception data, this thesis examines seven representative films (Chak De India, Wake Up Sid, My Name is Khan, The Lunchbox, Piku, Kapoor & Sons, and Lipstick Under My Burkha …

Vestigial Choreographies: Climate Consciousness In The Long Nineteenth Century, Alexandra A. Rego

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aims of this project are twofold: (a) to develop a method of theoretical analysis and (b) to put this method into pointed use. In service of (a), I propose a method of choreographic analysis. This method operates relationally, highlighting the production of movement and stillness among and between bodies, objects, and encounters. Choreographic analysis draws from methods typically sequestered to dance studies. Towards aim (b), this project demonstrates the relevance and breadth of choreographic analysis by connecting it to ecocriticism. Throughout this project, I apply choreographic analysis to a diverse set of case studies. I use choreographic analysis to …

School Just Wasn't For Me: Investigating The Intersections Of Education, Incarceration, And Improvisation, Kelly L. Brady

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New York City is the largest city in the United States and home to the nation's largest school system.  NYC public schools are also the country's most segregated, according to a 2021 report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project.  This qualitative, Arts-Based Research study follows the development and performance of an applied theater piece created by formerly incarcerated and court-involved youth exploring their early educational experiences before encountering the juvenile justice system. Using Disability/Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) and Critical Performance Ethnography this project investigates how structural systems of education and incarceration intersect to construct youth as "others," including special education, …

“Hip-Hop Permeates Everything I Do:” The Intersections Of Global Politics, Hip-Hop, And Education, Mecedes Lindsay

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This qualitative study examines how the absence of Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogy (CHHP) within academic institutions shapes students’ sense of belonging, motivation, and engagement by regulating which forms of cultural capital are deemed legitimate. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with students, educators, scholars, and members of the hip-hop generation, this research adopts an interpretivist framework to center participants’ lived experiences within educational spaces. Informed by Freirean critical pedagogy and Yosso’s theory of community cultural wealth, the study situates schooling as a site where America’s soft power operates through curriculum design, disciplinary norms, and definitions of deviance. Findings reveal that …

Purposefully Black Interactional Systems: Disrupting Punitive School Discipline Models Through Banter, The Funk, And The Black Aesthetic, S. M. Wilson

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This empirical study seeks to understand the narratives of four Black men teachers and two Black women teachers about how they implement school discipline and classroom management in their K–12 contexts. This track draws on interdisciplinary perspectives from education, linguistic anthropology, and African American studies to understand how banter and ritual insults function as alternatives to traditional discipline. Phenomenology and thematic analysis of six semistructured interviews demonstrated Black teachers’ beliefs that outdated and punitive orientations should be challenged. These teachers enacted discipline through talk—particularly banter, ritual insults, and what I call “purposefully Black interactional systems,” which embed discipline within them, …

Harriet Tubman’S Underground Railroad As Ancestral Technology For Black Futures, Julia Lynch

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This track draws on BlackMothering to frame Harriet Tubman not only as a conductor of freedom but as an architect of ancestral technology, designing strategies of survival that continue to instruct contemporary struggles. Tubman’s praxis—relational, anticipatory, and collective—illuminates the enduring power of Black knowledge systems to chart pathways through systems of violence and oppression. In conversation with Tiffani Marie and Kenjus Watson’s theorization of Apocalyptic Education and what Django Paris and H. Samy Alim describe as culturally sustaining pedagogy, this track explores how Tubman’s Underground Railroad praxis offers a blueprint for Black sustainability using (a) health and survival, (b) spatial …

Embodied Archives: The Body As Technology Of Black Sustainability, Felicia Rutledge

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This track develops the concept of embodied archives as technologies of Black sustainability in apocalyptic times. Building from Diana Taylor’s distinction between the archive and the repertoire, and in conversation with Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Sami Schalk, Tiffani Marie and Kenjus Watson, and Ruha Benjamin, I argue that Black bodies function as living repositories of knowledge. Long before schools claimed authority over learning, communities preserved memory in movement, rhythm, oral and signed languages, tactile practices, and everyday rituals of care. Disabled Black bodyminds, through practices such as braille literacy and augmentative and alternative communication, further illustrate how assistive …

Dancing In The Wake | Like Moss Over Modernity, Simple Ant

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This offering is a meditation on existing and thriving in the wake of civilization. For centuries, we have educated one another to believe in, and glorify, the insatiable desires of our modern way of life. I begin with the premise that what we call “civilization” is a system predicated on death, violence, and exploitation, because it requires the endless extraction and consumption of the living Earth. Living in this way guts the Earth to feed our ideas of “progress” and “prosperity.” The effect now is that our civilization, our society, our way of life is rotting—bringing with it decay and …

Rethinking The Canon: A Conceptual History Of The Layered Foundations Of Western Politics, Dembael Seidi, Muhammad Andi Firmansyah

Jurnal Wacana Politik

Many accounts of Western political history suggest a direct, straight line from Ancient Greece to modern democracy. This article argues that this “Great Books” narrative is a myth that ignores how political ideas actually change over time. Using Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history) framework, we demonstrate that key terms such as “law” and “citizenship” were not merely preserved but fundamentally transformed as they moved through Greco-Roman, Islamic, and Judeo-Christian civilizations. We call this transformation “conceptual alchemy”: a series of semantic translations through which Greek rationalism was retheorized via Islamic metaphysics and later synthesized by medieval scholasticism. Consequently, rather than a …