Digital Commons Network^™

Social Innovation In The Peacebuilding Sector, Michelle Helman, Phd, Katherine Ronderos, Mariafernanda Burgos-Ariza

Peace and Conflict Studies

Social innovation is an expanding practice in the peacebuilding sector. In this article, three peace scholar-practitioners reflect on our experiences as peacebuilders and consider the utility, tensions, and possibilities for peace and social innovation in theory and in practice. We draw insights gleaned through a focus group workshop with peacebuilding colleagues and highlight three case study examples from Colombia, the Philippines, and Kenya, each demonstrating the challenges and opportunities of social innovation in the peace sector. In doing so, we offer a reimagining of- and recommended action steps to engage innovation through a collaborative, feminist design approach. This article contributes …

Performance Of Illustrations And Images As Language In Sarnath Banerjee’S All Quiet In Vikaspuri, Akanksha Barthwal Ms

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri, fictionalizes but at the same time addresses water wars and political ideologies in the city of Delhi. By the means of eco-critical approach in the name of Vi-kas (development) Banerjee discuss the acts of slow violence subverted on nature in the name of progress (vikas). Through text/ images the author depicts chaos and challenges for the readers in more direct and obscene ways. The current paper attempts to look at Banerjee’s illustrations and images as new form of language emerged in modern Indian literature with the possibly that illustrations have more effect on …

Cut And Cultivate: Process And Practice, Kailey Atkinson

Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts

Using a candy-coated, flower-ridden, bright palette and maximalist sense of composition, my artwork builds community through narrative collage, photography, painting, sculpture, poetry, and social practice. Through a feminist lens, these bright works explore body image, gender roles, and social issues. Obsessively collecting and repurposing an archive of vintage imagery, my work draws parallels between traditional and contemporary topics through the language of collage and redaction.  My nascent social practice has led me to engage with narratives outside my own experience and offer my process as a healing modality to other women.

In a tumultuous political climate where art can serve …

Darkness Seen By Candlelight: Painting To Discover Feeling, Shelby Feltoon

Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts

This thesis discusses the ways that a phenomenological experience can translate itself through the medium of painting. This translation evokes deep feelings through physical considerations of materiality, light, context, distance, and time. Through a series of intimate and abstracted oil paintings created in thin layers, the work conveys an interdependent relationship between light and darkness. This project draws from research on art movements like Suprematism, Minimalism, and Expressionism, as well as larger practices and philosophies about photography and the sublime. The body of work draws direct reference to Junichiro Tanazaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows. Ultimately, the work described …

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 …

Resisting The Neoliberal Postfeminist Sexual Objectification Matrix: A Critical Autoethnography Exploring Sexual Objectification, Mental Health, Relationship To Self, And Reclaiming Subjectivity, Ildiko Archer

ETDs from 2020-2029

Over the past two decades, women’s subjectivity and sexual experience have been dramatically reshaped by the rise of dating apps, the normalization of hookup culture, the popularization of BDSM, and the dominance of neoliberal postfeminist sexual discourses. In the South, this all unfolds in the lingering residues of purity culture, creating a perfect storm of sexual objectification. This autoethnographic dissertation examines a defining period of my life shaped by the mental health consequences of sexual objectification and self-objectification. During this time, I experienced two brief marriages, many sexual relationships, posed on social media, dating apps, sexted, and performed sexual ‘agency’, …

The Spiritual Communities Of Bronies, Amie Sexton

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Bronies, adult, typically male, fans of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, have long been regarded for seemingly breaking expectations around gender norms. This study finds that Bronies break expectations around what is expected of spiritualism. Through interviews and ethnographic observation of social media spaces Bronies frequent, it is found that spirituality based on the cartoon within the fandom is broad, diverse, and at times, normative. A proportionally-small group of fully sincere spiritualists with plural experiences and strong convictions inspire a much larger community of post-ironic aspirants. Aspirations towards spiritual experiences and the development of profound terminologies create …

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.

Theatrical Agency In The Constitution Of Logical Space, Esther Marveta Neff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes advantage of our current moment of collapse and shifting episteme to move from resistance and critique into modes of position, prefiguration, and praxiocentricism, giving not only a critique of the colonial-modern logical space of Theatrum Mundi, but also aiming to configure the thetic consciousness that grounds “theatrical agency” in the logic of cognitive and social epistemological modelling.  In what ways do we “build our own worlds”? What does “theatricality” tell us about human agency, especially in the domain of “theoretical attitudes,” and “consciousness”? In what ways, and to what extent, are we responsible for constituting …

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems And The Principles Of Distinction And Proportionality, Nicholas Cromie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) challenge the core principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), distinction and proportionality, by delegating life-and-death decisions to algorithms rather than human judgment.  This dissertation examines whether LAWS can conform to these principles and, if so, under what conditions.  Through process tracing, the study traces the historical integration of disruptive weapons technologies, including chemical, biological, nuclear, and armed drones, into IHL-compliant frameworks or their exclusion via prohibition.  Each case reveals distinct pathways: outright bans for indiscriminate or inherently inhumane systems (chemical and biological weapons), normative restraint and limited acceptance despite destructive power (nuclear weapons) and phased …

Percepciones, Uso Y Confianza En Ia Generativa Según Género En Estudiantes Universitarios, Elena Rodríguez-Rodríguez, María Moreno Guzmán, Irene Ojeda Fernández, Juan Pablo Hervás-Pérez, Inmaculada Mateos-Aparicio, Alejandra García-Alonso, María Luisa Pérez-Rodríguez, Rocío De La Peña Armada, José Raggio, Beatriz Gómez-Gómez, Araceli Gónzalez-Cortés, Emma Gracia-Lor, Gustavo Moreno-Martín, Ángel Juilio Reviejo-García, Esther Sánchez-Tirado, Jon Sanz Landaluce, Arturo Casado, Marta Sánchez-Paniagua

GDI. Revista de investigación de Género, Diseño e Innovación

Introducción: La presencia creciente de la inteligencia artificial (IA) en la universidad está transformando el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje y la relación del alumnado con la tecnología. Un equipo docente de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC) y la Universidad Camilo José Cela (UCJC) diseñó diversas estrategias para integrar la IA generativa (IAg) como recurso complementario en asignaturas de estudios universitarios oficiales de Grado y Posgrado. Esta iniciativa surge de la necesidad de evaluar la implementación de la IA para mejorar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje y fomentar un uso crítico entre el alumnado de estas …

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 …

Aged 539 Internship Report: Cal Poly Rodeo Media And Marketing, Anna Grace Durham

Agricultural Education: Graduate Internship Reports

This internship report examines the role of media and marketing within the Cal Poly Rodeo Program and highlights the integration of leadership, athlete development, and strategic communications in a collegiate athletics setting. Serving as the Media Manager for Cal Poly Rodeo, the internship focused on strengthening the program's digital presence, enhancing brand identity, and increasing community engagement, particularly surrounding the 2026 Poly Royal Rodeo. Through collaboration with University Administrators, the Officer Team, sponsors, and external media partners, comprehensive marketing campaigns were developed and implemented, resulting in significant increases in social media reach, audience engagement, and ticket sales. The project included …

James Joyce’S “The Dead” And The Irish Nation, Hyrum G. Baird

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This paper investigates themes of Irish nationalism in James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” Drawing primarily in Joyce’s 1907 essay “Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages” as a source for Joyce's political views at the time he wrote “The Dead,” I outline Joyce’s critique of both Irish nationalism and British Imperialism, which Joyce synthesized into a general contempt for Ireland’s compromised national identity. Benedict Anderson’s theory of nations as “imagined communities” provides a theoretical underpinning for Joyce’s transcendence of nationalism. I argue that both nationalist and anti-nationalist readings of “The Dead” are difficult to resolve with Joyce’s documented political views. …

The Intersection Of Gender And Ecohorror In Poe’S Short Fiction, Ellie Dana

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This article argues that Poe uses female characters to express ecohorrific anxieties and imagine posthumanist ways of being. In "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe associates Madeline with nature's terrors by describing Madeline's disease as distinctly physical and coordinating her exit from her tomb with a raging storm. In "Berenice," Poe uses the violations of the titular character's body to enter into conversations about the rapid extraction of natural resources and the possibility of sentience beyond material existence. An ecohorrific reading of Poe’s texts reveals how Poe dismisses women as merely corporeal beings; however, ecohorror also reveals how …

Beyond The "Mucha Woman": Ornamental Invariance And Sarah Bernhardt's Cross-Gender Poster Persona, 1894-1899, Rose Mary Weigand, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Alphonse Mucha's recurring female figure is often treated as a unified Art Nouveau type, alternately interpreted as an erotic commodity, a decorative ideal, or an emblem of the New Woman. This article argues that the category becomes analytically unstable when it is applied to the theater posters Mucha designed for Sarah Bernhardt. Through close visual comparison of Gismonda (1894), Lorenzaccio (1896), Médée (1898), and Hamlet (1899), with JOB (1896) serving as a commercial countertype, the study develops the concept of ornamental invariance: a stable graphic system that preserves celebrity recognition while role, costume, narrative action, and gender change. Mucha's elongated …

Beyond Religious Narcissistic Identification: Agnostic And Atheistic Narcissism, Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska, Jarosław Piotrowski, Bartłomiej Nowak, V. Saroglou, John Maltby, Constantine Sedikides, Mladen Adamovic, Nur Amali Aminnuddin, Seth Christopher Yaw Appiah, Rahkman Ardi, Zana Babakr, Einar Baldursson, Sergiu Bălţătescu, M. Bilgehan Aytaç, Li, Norman P., Bruno Bonfá-Araujo, Matthias Burghart, Phatthanakit Chobthamkit, Marilyn Clark, Magali. Clobert

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Agnosticism and atheism are often grouped simply as nonreligious identities, yet emerging research highlights their distinct psychological profiles and social implications. Among these distinctions, collective narcissism—characterized by strong attachment to one’s group, exceptionalism, and grievance for recognition—offers a framework for understanding identity processes in both nonreligious groups. We examined whether agnostics and atheists exhibit collective narcissism and its forms (agentic—focused on exceptional effectiveness; communal—focused on exceptional morality) similarly to believers. We explored crossdenominational variance in agentic and communal collective narcissism levels relying on data from 77 countries (N = 3,570; 1227 agnostics, 2343 atheists). Agnostics and atheists from secular countries …

A History Of The Underground Comix Scene: The Seriousness Of An Unserious Genre, Harris Darcie Shugart

Master's Theses

The Underground Comix Scene of the 1960s and 1970s was born out of an age of censorship. The Comics Code Authority, a regulatory body created by the Comics Magazine Association of America in 1954, established guidelines requiring publishing houses to self-regulate following a recommendation from the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1953. Comix with an X, for their X-rated nature, represent an emerging counter-culture in the latter half of the 1960s and the 1970s, with an epicenter of San Francisco. These comix and their artists were not interested in obtaining the looming ‘Seal of Approval’ from the …

A Qualitative Exploration Of Spirituality In People Living With Dyspnea And Serious Illness, Leah Mccann Klug

All Poster Presentations

No abstract provided.

Concordia Seminary Magazine Spring 2026, Ken Ohlemeyer

Concordia Seminary Magazine

Shaped for His Service

Does This Story Make Sense?, Wayne Brouwer

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

The Desire Of Strict Souls: The Poetry, Criticism, And Letters Of Paul Valéry And Wallace Stevens, Michael Healy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation compares the poetic, critical, and epistolary oeuvres of Paul Valéry and Wallace Stevens and the influence of the former on the latter. Valéry famously advocated for the pursuit of “poésie pure” (“pure poetry”) and influenced Stevens especially in this way, though both of them concluded it was not achievable. I establish an approximation of a critical framework based on the work of the following critics and scholars: Wendy Lesser, Wendy Steiner, Anthony Cuda, Michael Clune, Paul Bové, and Liesl Olson. Harold Bloom’s passionate advocacy and deep, sustained engagement with Stevens and his work strongly influenced my choice to …

Agriculture, Politics, And Knowledge: The Dissemination And Evolution Of The Pictures Of Tilling And Weaving From The Southern Song Dynasty To The Qing Dynasty, Kaiyi Zhu, Ting Chen

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

Gengzhitu 耕織圖 (Pictures of Tilling and Weaving) functions as a cultural artifact representative of agrarian civilization and dynastic governance, fulfilling dual roles as a vessel for agricultural knowledge and a motivational tool for farming practices. Over the course of its transmission from the Southern Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, a fascinating relationship emerged between the practical knowledge imparted by the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving and its role as a motivational tool for agricultural practices, creating a dynamic interaction akin to a seesaw effect. The fluctuation between the “form” and the “knowledge” of the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving …

Walking The Path Of Conocimiento: Understanding And Navigating Workplace Conflict Through A Chicana Feminist Lens, Elisa A. Ortega-Schultz

Dissertations

The growing presence of Latinas in the U.S. workforce underscores the need for deeper understanding of their workplace experiences. Latinas represent one of the fastest growing segments of the labor force; however, research consistently shows that this growth is not matched by equitable access to leadership, compensation, or culturally responsive workplace environments. Latinas continue to experience persistent barriers related to pay inequity, career advancement, cultural belonging, and overall well-being.

Conflict frameworks that account for the unique experiences of Latinas are needed, as dominant approaches rooted in neutrality, procedural efficiency, and Western individualism often fail to account for the embodied, relational, …

Temporal Integration In Music And Aesthetic Judgments: Assessing Musical Taste Through A Transformer-Based Approach, Sophia M. Senderak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Music unfolds over time, requiring listeners to integrate information moment by moment to make aesthetic judgments. Although we know that music is likely processed on multiple timescales, it is not known which musical features contribute to short versus long timeframes. This study examined whether a computational measure of temporal integration could help explain aesthetic responses to music. Participants (N = 28) listened to 32 sixty-second clips of classical and electronic music, and continuously rated their enjoyment with a dial. After listening, they then gave an overall liking judgment for each clip. To quantify temporal integration, we derived an integration measure …

A Twilight World Of Unspeakable Horror: Lesbian Camp And The Vampire Lovers (1970), Mirielle Lemay

University Honors Theses

From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, a wave of lesbian vampire themed exploitation films proliferated through UK, US, and Western European cinemas. In critical literature on this subgenre, camp reading is often dismissed, unacknowledged, or understood as circumscribed by authorial intent and/or intended audience. With this alternating lack of attention to and dismissal of camp, the interpretive agency of the queer spectator is constrained, their spectatorship implicitly subordinated to that of the "conventional" horror audience—the voyeuristic-sadistic male spectator. Through a reading of The Vampire Lovers, a 1970 British production from Hammer Studios, I seek to explore how …

Contributor Bios, Editorial Board

Intertidal

No abstract provided.

Legends, Lies, & Rewritten Lives: After The Little Bighorn: Forgotten Struggles Of Those Who Walked Away, 2nd Edition, Thomas B. Davidson

DU Textbooks

This Story surrounds an event that occurred one summer on June 25, 1876, along the banks of the Little Bighorn River in what is now the state of Montana. Seen from a 21st century perch, it is a story of a collision between two very different civilizations or empires. Both empire’s military fought in the manner of their society. This narrative will attempt to balance the believable truth of what happened in that contest between the military representatives of both societies while also trying to tell an engaging story, without drifting into naked partisanship, purple prose, or sensationalism. The narrative …

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 …

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 …