Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

A Hybrid Generation: Globalization, Migration, And Cultural-Theological Reconfiguration Among Second-Generation Ghanaian Pentecostal Immigrants In The United States--Toward A Diasporic Mission Theology, David Osei-Nimoh

College of Theology and Ministry Dissertations, Projects, & Theses

This dissertation investigates how globalization, migration, and Pentecostalism shape the cultural and theological of second-generation Ghanaian Pentecostals in the United States. Using Mark Cartledge’s four-stage empirical theological cycle, it interprets participants’ lived experience as theological data in critical dialogue with Scripture, the doctrine of The Church of Pentecost (COP), and Pentecostal theological method. The study is based on 26 weeks of multisite fieldwork in three COP U.S.A. congregations—Washington, D.C., Dallas, and Tacoma—and draws on participant observation, 55 semi-structured interviews, three focus groups, and archival materials. The analysis yielded three interrelated findings. First, participants negotiate a bicultural Ghanaian American identity within …

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 …

Del Miedo A La Ternura: Deconstrucción De Imaginarios Constitutivos De La Iag Para Imaginarla Como Una Tecnología Futura, Elizabeth Rodríguez Rendon

GDI. Revista de investigación de Género, Diseño e Innovación

El artículo propone una reflexión crítica a modo de ensayo sobre los imaginarios sociotécnicos que han configurado históricamente el desarrollo de la tecnología y, particularmente, de la Inteligencia Artificial Generativa (IAG). Se sostiene que la ciencia moderna occidental se estructuró a partir del miedo como afecto dominante, heredado de las tradiciones prometeica y fáustica, las cuales promovieron una relación con la técnica basada en el control, la dominación de la naturaleza y el rechazo de la finitud humana. Desde esta lógica, la tecnología ha sido imaginada como instrumento de poder, defensa y superioridad, reforzando narrativas de fascinación y temor frente …

Entre La Magia Y La Carga: Género, Trauma Y Otredad En Encanto, Sergio García Cabezas, Ángel Serrano Valverde

GDI. Revista de investigación de Género, Diseño e Innovación

Este artículo analiza la película Encanto (Disney, 2021) desde una perspectiva de género, memoria y representación, con el objetivo de desentrañar cómo los personajes femeninos encarnan presiones sociales y culturales que trascienden la narrativa fantástica. A partir de un enfoque cualitativo basado en el análisis narrativo y semiótico, se examinan cuatro figuras centrales: Luisa, como metáfora de la sobrecarga física y emocional; Isabela, como encarnación de la prisión de la perfección estética; Mirabel, como representación de la invisibilización y la otredad; y Abuela Alma, como símbolo de la transmisión transgeneracional del trauma. Junto a ellas, los principales símbolos de la …

Selama Ibu Dan Bayi Aman: Lotus Birth Dan Negosiasi Keselamatan Dalam Praktik Kebidanan Di Indonesia, Dyah Pratitasari

Antropologi Indonesia

This article reads lotus birth—the practice of leaving the umbilical cord intact until it separates naturally—as an ethnographic event that illuminates how biomedical power operates in contemporary Indonesian midwifery. Drawing on reflexive ethnography of two births attended by the author as a doula—one at a maternity clinic in South Tangerang (2020) and one at a home birth in South Jakarta (2022)—the article argues that the phrase "as long as mother and baby are safe" does not function as a neutral condition. Rather, it operates as Gramscian hegemonic common sense: appearing self-evident and beyond question, while simultaneously determining which …

The Historical Persistence Of Working-Class Culture: How Laborers Created The Ethical Foundation Of Western Civilization, Kenneth Atkinson

Faculty Publications

This article highlights four historical events that shape our present: the world’s first industrial strike in ancient Egypt to protest workers’ health and safety; working-class efforts to improve labor conditions during the Roman Republic and Middle Ages through strikes and the creation of guilds; the social justice activism of the prophets of Western religions (all working-class folks!); and the creation of the selfie and the transition from a culture of character to our present obsession with celebrities and individualism that began during the Renaissance. Each case highlights unique features of working-class culture, working class reactions to societal changes, and the …

Why Choose Green Burial: Raising Awareness About An Under-Utilized Method Of Body Disposition, Gretchen Mahlberg

University Honors Theses

Green burial, the process of human burial in a biodegradable vessel without embalming, is a simple method for disposal of remains that has been used around the world for centuries, yet it is chosen less than 5% of the time in the US today. The stigma about discussing death has led to a lack of awareness about options and created an environment where morticians, as the sole sources of information, direct the bereaved towards the options most beneficial to themselves. Previous methods to raise awareness about green burial have had limited reach, being focused on people who are already researching …

A Northwest Perspective: A Comprehensive Survey Of Sally Haley's Life And Career, Mary Timbrook

University Honors Theses

Sally Haley is a successful artist who built a long career in the second half of the 20th century as a painter in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been part of several solo and group exhibitions within museums and galleries across the country and she was awarded the Oregon Governor's Award for the Arts in 1989. She is best remembered for her unique still life paintings, frequently painted in egg tempera, which sold immensely well during her lifetime and after. Haley trained at the Yale School of Art in the late 1920s and early 30s, where she learned to paint …

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 …

An Absolute Manner Of Seeing: Flaubert, 1848, And The Development Of Modernist Style, Nicholas Olson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education as a key work in the emergence of literary Modernism from the tradition of Realism. I begin by exploring the intellectual background of Realism in the works of Honoré de Balzac and the ties between this aesthetic theory and the theory of representative government: here I discuss the work of François Guizot, Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Schlegel, J.W. Goethe, and Walter Scott as well as later thinkers like György Lukács, Pierre Bourdieu, Jürgen Habermas, and Jacques Rancière. From this, I demonstrate a commonly held theory of the social as a discreet totality, which makes …

Kitchen Table Press: A Case Study Of Regression To The Neoliberal Mean, Alaina Disalvo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the idealistic founding of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980 and its slow downfall, culminating in the cession of ownership of the Press to a university in 1992. It traces the ideological development of Kitchen Table Press’s key founders, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde, and their respective relationships to the ideologies of other renowned feminist figures of the era, specifically June Jordan and Adrienne Rich. It examines the history of the Press through historical, intersectional, affective, and socialist lenses. This thesis argues that neoliberal pressures can bend even the most radical organizations away from their …

Who Is Invited To The National Family? A Brazilian Autoethnography Of Being A Woman Under The U.S. O-3 Visa, Bruna Lauermann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis lives in the borderlands between Brazil and the United States, during the nine years of my immigration to the United States. Using autoethnography, I analyze the O-3 visa as a tool that controls and alienates foreign women and devalues knowledge produced outside U.S. borders. This visa, for spouse or children of O-1 holders, which are people considered to have extraordinary abilities to work in the U.S. showcases the reasons why one is invited to be part of the national family and under what obligations and circumstances. A decision that is shaped far more by the interests of the …

The Hope Dionysos (After Augustus): A Post-Actian Reading Of Dionysian Imagery, Jane Horman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the center of the Roman court at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York stands an almost seven-foot-tall statue of an androgynous looking figure, leaning on a smaller statue of a woman. This piece, formally known as Statue of Dionysos Leaning on a Female Figure, has been nicknamed the Hope Dionysos for both the archaic statue he is leaning on, as well as the family to whose collection he belonged for many years. However, in its day, the statue occupied a complicated place in Roman culture. This paper will examine the ways in which Dionysos, specifically through …

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 …

Unrepresentable Objects: Neoliberalism In The Contemporary Novel In French, Alicen Marie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation operates at the intersections of textual analysis, political theory, psychoanalytic theory, and aesthetics to investigate the prevalence of uncanny imagery in ten examples of contemporary fiction, while also interrogating the notion of the uncanny as a category of analysis. Entitled “Unrepresentable Objects: Neoliberalism in the Contemporary Novel in French,” it examines a group of novels by Marie Darrieussecq, Virginie Despentes, Marie NDiaye, and Linda Lê, published in France between 1993 and 2017. These novels share an aesthetic of hauntedness and breakdown, incongruous affect, and a continual presence of the uncanny; they depict a world split from history and …

Erosion And Accretion: Mobilities Of Sand, People, And Memory At Queer Riis Beach, Jah Elyse Sayers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York, is a vibrant place of queer and trans public-space placemaking—and especially Black and working class queer and trans placemaking. A distinct queer ecology emerges in the interplay of the dynamic movement of the barrier island, queer and trans—especially queer and trans Afro-diasporic—mobilities. This queer ecology, while articulated with, also defies and exceeds logics and workings of private property. In response to a convergence of pressures on Black, queer, trans, and working-class placemaking on the beach site in the 2020s, beachgoers have mobilized longstanding provisional socialities …

Kanak-Ish Misfits: Queer Imaginaries, Racialized Borders, And The Politics Of Care In Berlin, Germany, Faruk Seref

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines queer Muslim experiences of border politics, racialization, and care in Berlin, Germany. By formulating bordering as a domineering and oppressive practice of boundary-making, I study how global bordering mechanisms shape and disrupt structures of care, caring, and being cared for. With an intersectional focus on race, gender, sexuality, and sex, I argue that borders are simultaneously materialized and challenged in varying localities, including the nightclub, the queer scene, the diasporic neighborhoods, and households. Ultimately, viewing collective care as fundamental to survival, healing, resistance, and building non-punitive lifeworlds, I theorize the counter-hegemonic practices of queers of color through …

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 …

Three Degrees Of Representation: How Genai Filters, Retrieves, And Remixes Lesbian Film Data, Maria G. Baker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project investigates how generative AI systems assemble, filter, and represent Lesbian film data. Through auditing GenAI outputs across multiple dimensions (text, images, metadata), 3°R explores what gets included, excluded, and transformed in the process.

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Three Degrees of Representation is a public website (https://mgb513.github.io/lesfilm-meets-AI/) featuring an investigation of AI-generated images and texts in response to Lesbian film data. Filtering simple prompts based on Lesbian film titles through the algorithms of AI image and text generators makes visible how these systems digest and remix existing (training) data, and how aspects of Lesbian representation are either amplified or suppressed …

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, …

Materializing The Interface: Personal Data Feeds Generative Art, Erin Livingston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Materializing the Interface: Personal Data Feeds Generative Art is a data-studio capstone project that reconstructs elements of desktop and mobile interfaces as handmade mixed-media artifacts, then digitizes them as an interactive website where generative text and images are fed by personal data flows. Twenty-one paper collage windows — built from cardstock, risograph-printed paper, and mixed media — were photographed, digitized, and activated using code to become the interactive surface of a desktop view driven by browser history. A corresponding mobile view renders a corpus of 500 Instagram advertisement screenshots through a risograph print aesthetic, fed by a hand-tagged emotion and …

“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, …

Remixing The Academy Through Backyard Spaces: The Making Of Black Educology, The Mixtape, Dre Carter, Eghosa Obaizamomwan-Hamilton

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

As Black academics, researchers, and educators, we navigate the twin topographies of the academy and the open territories of possibility. Connecting these realms, we construct “backyard project” spaces—semi-enclosed areas linking academic spaces and liberated spaces. We use our creation of the backyard as a locality wherein we challenge oppressive, antiquated academic systems and anti-Blackness without waiting for reform. For example, our collective project, the Black Educology Mixtape “Journal,” exemplifies this concept. This track discusses the “backyard” as an extension of both third and fugitive spaces and, through material culture and fugitivity as method, highlights the backyard as a site for …

We Buried The Curriculum And Called It Holy, Charles E. Becknell Jr., Johnna Rocker-Clinton

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This track develops the concept of apocalyptic pedagogy by situating it within Africana studies and classroom rituals, illustrating how curriculum itself can be examined, buried, and reimagined through practices rooted in Black educology. Drawing on ancestral knowledge and collective memory, the track envisions ritual as curriculum, where libation and remembrance become practices of mourning and reclamation. Rather than centering institutional reform, the track frames education as a ritual circle enacting pedagogy as remembrance, mourning, and rebirth, honoring Black life as sacred.

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 …

Black Boys And The New Media Mixtape: Ownership, Aspiration, And Hustle In A Digital Age, Kareem Edouard, Taquan S. Stewart

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

In this track, we explore how “new media” platforms become modern “mixtape” tools for Black boys to remix identity and cultural narratives in the digital age. As Audre Lorde reminded us, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Still, we aim to interrogate whether these tools can be repurposed for empowerment. This framework unfolds in three parts: examining ownership and the gatekeeping of cultural narratives, exploring how new media platforms shape aspirations and identities for Black boys, and identifying the tools and pathways for Black boys to both see themselves as creators and access content that reflects them. …