Digital Commons Network^™

Russian Political Warfare: What It Is, What It's Not, And Why It Isn't Working, Lance Bokinskie

Global Insight

This article defines Russia’s multifaceted approach to political warfare and analyzes its effectiveness in achieving foreign policy objectives. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine is an exemplary case study to define the aspects of 21st-century Russian political warfare and analyze its efficacy as an approach to foreign policy. This case study will lend meaningful support to the claim that the utility of Russian political warfare is severely limited by the adhocratic foreign policy encouraged by the Kremlin—specifically, the lack of an overarching proscriptive foreign policy strategy and a functioning bureaucracy to enforce the pursuit of outlined objectives, definitive organizational purviews, and …

Book Review, Da-Shiva Francois

Global Insight

Book Review of Teaching Performance Practices in Remote and Hybrid Spaces, edited by Jeanmarie Higgins and Elisha Clark Halpin. Routledge, 2022. 230 pages. $42.95. ISBN 978-1-0032-2905-6.      

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 …

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 …

Isu Wind Symphony And Metea Valley High School Korean Percussion Ensemble: April 22, 2026, Anthony C. Marinello Iii, Madison Mueller-Howell, Useon Choi, Nicole Schimdt, Kyle Gilles, Jordan Yi

School of Music Programs

This is the one hundred and eighty-seventh program of the 2025-2026 season.

Center for the performing Arts

April 22, 2026

Wednesday Evening

7:00 p.m.

Stories We Tell (April 22, 24, 2026), Lindenwood University

Student Dance Programs & Brochures

Event program for Stories We Tell (April 22, 24, 2026), Lindenwood University.

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

SAE What? - Student Magazine

No abstract provided.

From Collection To Documentary: An Eventful Journey Of Developing And Managing The Wan-Go H.C. Weng Film Collection, Jim Cheng

Journal of East Asian Libraries

Experience, challenge, lesson, reward, and inspiration of developing and managing a special collection: Wan-go Weng Film Collection in a major research library.

Rest For The Weary Soul: A Mixed Methods Psychospiritual Exploration Of Faith As A Path To Mental Health Recovery Among Students, Fremativo A. Vergara, Melvin G. Barete, Evan P. Taja-On

Journal of Catholic Education

Many individuals turn to faith for strength, guidance, and resilience, particularly at times of emotional hardship. As concerns continue to grow about mental health, particularly that of students, exploring how faith influences coping mechanisms and recovery offers valuable insights into alternative approaches to emotional wellbeing. The study found that students exhibit high levels of resilience and spiritual intelligence, suggesting that faith-based beliefs are crucial in students’ ability to cope with adversity. A strong positive correlation between resilience and spiritual intelligence indicates that students who integrate faith into their lives are more likely to develop the psychological strength needed to navigate …

Volume 104, Number 1 - Spring 2026, The Alembic

The Alembic

Cover "The Stars are Screaming in the Field Outside my Apartment" by Hale Mueller

How Visual Art In Fatty Legs And A Stranger At Home Deepens The Understanding Of Historical Atrocities And Colonial Violence Inflicted On Indigenous Children In Residential Schools In The United States And Canada, Beth Rocco

Student Theses

“I can fix my own hair,” I protested in Inuvialuktun, but she held tight and, with the same motion a bird makes to pull a piece of flesh from a fish, clamped the jaws of the shears down on my braid and severed it” (Pokiak-Fenton 31). This scene in Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret-Olemaun Pokiak-Fenton, was a deep cut into the soul of a child. The first slash was being taken away from her parents and family. Next was chopping off her hair, a symbol of identity and tribal pride for Indigenous people. The children began their residential …

Answers “Go By Water”: Felt Knowledge As An Alternative Epistemology In Othello, Annalisa Gulbrandsen

Theses and Dissertations

William Shakespeare's Othello is fundamentally a play about epistemology--how does one know what he/she knows amidst the sea of words, evidence, and misdirection? Traditionally, the problem of knowledge in Othello has been treated as an intellectual problem of the mind. However, this thesis argues that the play purposefully draws attention to the limits of what the mind can know by way of the eye (what is seen) and ear (what is spoken or heard), instead offering an alternative epistemology that is felt through embodiment. When Desdemona's words no longer have the power to affect what Othello believes, Desdemona's answers to …

Editors, The Alembic

The Alembic

No abstract provided.

The Snake, Jacqueline Lombardo

The Alembic

No abstract provided.

Meet The Editors, The Alembic

The Alembic

Editors-in-Chief Maddie Aylward Andrew Hilton Managing Editor Olivia Gleason InDesign Manager Jenna Gomez-Nieto Business & Social Media Coordinator Kristina Spence Editorial Staff Kate Blackwell Ella Bloom Alyssa Caneira Sophia Caneira Seth Chaffee Terence Connors Sarah Debian Meghan Gracey Ian Gualtiere Sara MacKinnon Finn Heller Maeve McWilliams Audio Production Manager Sara MacKinnon Audio Production Staff Claire Cunningham Luca DeLucia Faculty Advisor Emily Pittinos

2026 Undergraduate Research Symposium Program, Coastal Carolina University

Undergraduate Research Symposium Programs

17th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, April 21-22, 2026.

The 2026 CCU Undergraduate Research Symposium included 72 oral presentations, 127 poster presentations, and 22 team pitch presentations comprising 50 students who participated in the Wall College’s Chant’s Tank Pitch Competition.

Presentations at the Undergraduate Research Symposium were judged by almost 90 faculty and staff, and prizes were awarded in three categories: Best Oral Presentation, Best Poster Presentation, and Best Chant’s Tank Pitch Presentation. Here are the following award winners and their mentors in their respective categories:

Best Oral Presentation:

• 1st Place: Ryan Ryan Avallone, Applied Mathematics. Faculty Mentor: Bong Jeong (Management …

Shift Work And Shift Change And Police Officers’ Subjective Well-Being, Macey Silano

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of police officers working second and third shifts and how these schedules impacted their subjective well-being, mental health, relationships, and life satisfaction. This study addressed an important research problem because limited research has examined how night shifts and shift changes impact police officers’ well-being. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how police officers experienced shift work and shift changes while working second and third shifts and how they made meaning of these experiences in relation to subjective well-being. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study was grounded in restorative rest and …

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 …

The Place We Live Which Does Not Exist, Jonathon Parker Yontz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

The Place We Live Which Does Not Exist is a collection of stories examining the intersection of trauma and catharsis through a psychologically manufactured underground environment. By inhabiting the perspectives of multiple characters, each story builds toward a collective reality that exists parallel to our present. As the shortsightedness of hedonistic expression is shown, the viability of escapism as panacea is questioned, exploring the ends of a society increasingly dependent on reclusive tendencies.

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, …

History Of Tarot, Sophia Shapiro

The Penguin Review

Believe it or not, this modern mystical favorite has a very different origin story! Tarot was originally a trump card game, Tarocchini, developed in 15th-century Italy.

The War On War: Desensitization's Effects On Society's Moral Fabric, Chelsea E. Johnson, Andrew J. Cudden

The Penguin Review

In an era of constant connectivity, violence is no longer distant or intermittent. Wars, political repression, mass shootings, and humanitarian crises now unfold in real time, shared instantly through twenty-four-hour news cycles and social media. Never before has global suffering been so visible. Yet this unprecedented access has failed to produce sustained moral urgency or collective responsibility. Instead, violence becomes increasingly utilised as fleeting content–viewed, shared, and then displaced by the next trending event. This paradox raises a pressing ethical question: how can a world more informed of suffering become so morally disengaged from it?

Fighting For The Story: How Identity Shapes The Israel–Hamas War, Ana Lilia Zavala

The Penguin Review

The war between the state of Israel and the militant group Hamas is often portrayed in strictly strategic or material terms, from rockets and tunnels to ground offensives and massive casualties. Yet what truly lies at the core of the conflict in the Gaza Strip is not merely a struggle over territory or security, but a struggle of identities, narratives, and legacies of harm. From my constructivist standpoint, I believe that actors act not just because of “national interests,” but because of how they understand their own identity, how they interpret the other, and how normative structures shape their choices. …

Present Day North Korea, Milo Fisher-Golton

The Penguin Review

The government of North Korea poses an extreme threat to the world while suppressing its citizens’ freedom, so why doesn't this topic get the attention it warrants in the United States? North Korea has been the cause of two major inhumane issues for some time now: as a nuclear threat to all other countries, and as a human rights suppressor to its own population under its communist dictator, Kim Jong Un. North Korea is at odds with its geographical neighbors, the United States, and other global powers. Their access to nuclear weapons– along with their alliances with Russia and China– …

Behind The Scenes - Anthony Cheung

V Music Magazine

No abstract provided.

Talk - Eric Kot

V Music Magazine

No abstract provided.

Chi Chung's Voice

V Music Magazine

No abstract provided.

Vol. 1 Full Issue

V Music Magazine

No abstract provided.