Digital Commons Network^™

The Latino Higher Education Landscape In Massachusetts, Fatema B. Ahad, Fabián Torres-Ardila, Elisa Castillo, Lorna Rivera, Joseph B. Berger

Gastón Institute Publications

This white paper provides a statistical overview of HSIs in Massachusetts within the state’s evolving demographics and postsecondary education context. It presents historical trends on student enrollment, student outcomes, and faculty and staff composition, highlighting the state of Latino students in the Commonwealth. The analysis offers descriptive data to inform policymakers, practitioners, and institutional leaders. It does not evaluate causal relationships or institutional effectiveness. The institutions included in this report were identified as HSIs and emerging HSIs through full-time equivalent (FTE) analysis for fall 2024 data. This is not an official or comprehensive list of schools eligible for, or that …

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 …

Fundamentalist Disorientations For Queer Subjects: Narrative And Theory, Betty Canoso

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines disorientation experienced by queer people who were raised in high-cost fundamentalist Christianity–people like me. Disorientation is a philosophical concept useful for examining specific intersections of human experience, like queerness and fundamentalism. Philosophers such as Sara Ahmed (2006) and Ami Harbin (2016) have been exploring the intersection of queerness and disorientation. Psychologists, sociologists and researchers from other disciplines are analyzing the interrelatedness of queerness and religion, and disaffiliation and deconversion from high-cost or high-control religions is another ongoing area of interest. Yet, despite widespread interest in these concepts, few have looked at instances of disorientation as they pertain …

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 …

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.

Imagination And The Self: A Cross-Cultural And Cross-Disciplinary Study, Qianyi Qin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation of the imagination and the self that engages with cognitive science, philosophy of mind, Buddhism, ethical theories, and a variety of perspectives from Asian and Western philosophy. I address the following questions in three interrelated chapters. First, what does it mean for the self to appear in imagination? In Chapter 1, against certain narrow understandings of the self in philosophy of language, I build a multidimensional model of the self in imaginative experiences to capture the rich phenomenology, drawing on empirical findings on memory and imagination. Second, can the self be removed from imagination? …

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 …

Policing Sex Trafficking: 'They’Re Never Taught, You Know', Anila S. Duro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research shows that victims of sex trafficking are most likely to first come in contact with the police (Baldwin et al, 2011; Twigg, 2017) and at times police have not been able to categorize cases of prostitution as trafficking even when trafficking elements were very clear (Dank et al, 2017; Dempsey, 2017; Farrell & Cronin, 2015). Despite the legal definition of trafficking, the terms prostitution, sex work, and sex trafficking are sometimes used interchangeably by law enforcement, whereas at other times, these words refer to different sets of circumstances and have different criminalization outcomes.  Research in this area is limited …

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 …

So Great A Cloud Of Witnesses: A Critical Race Counterstory On Teacher Preparation And Repair, La Mont Terry

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

Selective liberal arts colleges (SLACs) are traditionally undergraduate institutions that focus on providing a broad education in the arts, sciences, and humanities rather than the professional training for the workforce typically available at other institutions of higher education. Despite their comprehensive curriculum, many SLACs have a decades-long commitment to teacher preparation as recognition of the connected nature of K–12 schooling and higher education. This track examines the closure of one such teacher preparation program at an urban liberal arts college and its impact on the faculty who taught in it. Using the critical race theory method of counterstorytelling, I position …

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.

Kong Koch: An Autoethnography On Jieng Indigenous Wisdom And Ethos Of Leadership, Dau D. Jok

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

In this track, I argue that Jieng (Dinka) epistemology reshapes leadership by foregrounding restraint (achin te lui ye), emotional regulation (kong koch), and social harmony (wel tuc). These Indigenous approaches challenge dominant trait-based leadership models by exposing their limits in confronting social and contextual diversity. To illustrate these ideas, I draw on personal accounts and member checks with my grandmother (Aboba) to show how Jieng wisdom reframes concepts of leadership, disposition, and practice. Building on this, the track advances Afrocentric leadership literature by defining leadership as communal accountability. Furthermore, it stresses the urgent need for scholars and practitioners to engage …

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. …

Nineteenth Century Deaf Education In The United States: A Survey Of The Schools, Styles Of Instruction, And The Events That Led To The Dark Ages Of Deaf Education, Christopher Arra

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

The present study reviewed 19th-century deaf education in the United States and investigated controversial curriculum changes that led to the Dark Ages of Deaf Education. Two pedological approaches to deaf education were discussed: oralism and manualism, and a brief review of the 19th-century deaf education schools in the United States was also conducted. Readers are also made aware of the specific events that led to the Dark Ages of Deaf Education, and implications for Instructors are also discussed.

Old Crimes, New Eyes: Recent Findings From The Scottish Witch Hunts, Carol Lee Campbell

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

^Abstract

^{Most discussions about the Scottish witch trials have been shrouded in a category of superstition, primarily from historians postulating from the era of the Enlightenment one hundred years afterward. Some have distanced themselves from the witch hunts by universalizing the cases within a monolithic framework. But the data shows that the Scottish witch “panic” was disproportionately more intense than other hunts in Early Modern Europe and England.}

^{In the last generation, however, scholars utilizing interdisciplinary approaches have revisited trial records and their supporting documents- such as confessions and testimonies - which appear to reveal more than just trial outcomes. …}

Narrative Roots - What We Inherit, What We Tell, What We Become: Intergenerational Storytelling, Meaning-Making, And Mental Health, Adam Sholder

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This capstone synthesis explores how the family stories we inherit and the stories we tell across generations shape who we become, with particular attention to their impact on identity and mental health. Drawing on narrative identity theory, reflective practice, and relational understandings of family life, it introduces the Recursive Narrative Integration Model, which positions intergenerational storytelling as both a method of inquiry and a mechanism of meaning-making. Informed by a recursive process of creative and reflective writing, this synthesis approaches storytelling not only as an object of study, but as a lived and generative practice through which experience and narrative …

Reading Isabella Hammad And Beyond: The Unsaid – The Point Of Recognizing Turning Points, Narratives (Stories), And Strangers, Rory Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The essay is a reflection on Isabella Hammad’s book, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative (2024). The essay’s approach is to follow the four themes that reflect the title and the subtitle of the book and to draw out what is unsaid from what is said by Hammad. The unsaid reflects my conceptual and historical baggage, so there is a wide assortment of theorists that I connect Hammad with, including Edward Said, Hannah Arendt, Amartya Sen, Didier Fassin, and Slavoj Žižek.

Racism, Coping, And In-Race Heterosexism Among Asian American Sexually Expansive People: A Moderated Moderation Analysis, Miah Theresse A. Sabas

Graduate Masters Theses

Asian American sexually expansive people (AA SEP) are at elevated risk of psychological distress at the intersection of racism and heterosexism (Takeda et al., 2021). Less is known about how AA SEP cope with intersectional oppression, including experiences of in-race heterosexism. With a sample of 105 AA SEP, correlations indicated a positive link between psychological distress (PD; DASS-21, Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) and racism-related stress (RRS; Brief PEDQ-CV, Brondolo et al., 2005), but not in-race heterosexism (Perceived Racism in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Communities Scale, Sarno et al., 2015). Moderation analyses indicated only active coping buffered the relation between RRS …

Talk To Me: Exploring The Sociocultural Ecology Of Home Language And Literacy Practices Of Families In India, Surbhi Puri

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Existing research highlights the role of home language and literacy environments (HLLE) in shaping early language and literacy development, yet few studies have examined the practices of multilingual families in India. While home environments offer rich learning opportunities, broader sociocultural and policy contexts influence how families support literacy and language development. Families’ insights into home language use, literacy routines, and cultural practices remain underexplored in early childhood education research.

The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the HLLE of preschool-aged children in India and examine how families support early language and literacy development within multilingual home …

Critical Geopolitics And The Reconstruction Of Meaning: A Discourse Analysis Of The 'Terrorism' Label Applied To Hamas By Western Hegemony, Cahaya Mulyani Sakti, M.Hamdan Basyar

Journal of Terrorism Studies

The emergence of Hamas in 1987 cannot be separated from the configuration of modern colonialism and the continuity of occupation that shaped the political reality. Hamas’s early phase was rooted in socio-religious activities through education and community empowerment programs, before evolving into armed resistance against the occupation. The labeling of Hamas as a “terrorist” organization began in the mid-1990s in U.S. legal documents, which subsequently generated debate and gave rise to counter-narratives. This study employs the frameworks of critical geopolitics (Ó Tuathail & Agnew) and the Discourse-Historical Approach (Wodak) to analyze the labeling of Hamas as “terrorist” by Western hegemony. …

Digital Communication And The Evolution Of Ideological Narratives In Indonesia: Insights From Social Media Platforms, Tia Mariatul Kibtiah, Muhammad Fikri Fawazi

Journal of Terrorism Studies

This study examines how pro-caliphate and anti-democratic narratives are articulated and normalised within YouTube comment spaces in Indonesia. As the world’s largest Muslim-majority country with high levels of digital engagement, Indonesia provides an important context for analysing how political-religious discourses circulate through everyday digital interaction. The research analyses 1,354 YouTube comments related to the caliphate, governance, and democracy. Data were collected using Google Apps Script, manually filtered for relevance, and examined through qualitative content analysis informed by Social Network Theory (SNT) and the Radicalisation Factor Model (RFM). The findings show that 34.49% of comments endorsed ideological pro-caliphate narratives, while 35.97% …

Makna Simbolik Dan Memori Pascakolonial Dalam Cyanotype Fusion Dialogue “Trade Of Faith” Karya Budi Agung Kuswara: Kajian Semiotika Roland Barthes, Wisesa Abrar Mufid Munawwar Wahyuono, A. Syarifuddin Rohman

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

The cyanotype artwork Fusion Dialogue: Trade of Faith by Budi Agung Kuswara represents a contemporary art practice that combines cyanotype techniques and mixed media to construct visual narratives of colonialism, trade, spirituality, and cultural identity. This study aims to identify the visual symbols embedded in the artwork and analyze their meanings based on Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory. A descriptive qualitative approach was employed, with the researcher serving as the primary instrument. Data were collected through observation, documentation, interviews with the artist, and a literature review. Analysis involved symbol identification as well as denotative, connotative, mythological, and aesthetic analyses. The findings …

Making Noise Through Law: Indigenous Legal Mobilisation Against A Power Plant In “French” Guiana, Pierre Auzerau

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In so-called “French” Guiana, or Guyane, the Kali’na village of Atopo Wipi has fought for years against a hydrogen power plant being built on their land. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2024 in Guyane and Western Europe, where I collaborated with various stakeholders to support Atopo Wipi’s resistance to the power plant, my research focuses on the legal dimensions of the Kali’na’s struggle to protect their land. Specifically, this article examines how the Kali’na navigated different normative frameworks, including international human rights standards and French law, to fight the project. Through this analysis, I show how the …

Working Out Your Self-Image: Strength, Self-Esteem, And Human Flourishing, Kingston K. Christie

Honors Projects

This project integrates empirical research in exercise science with theological anthropology to examine the psychological effects of resistance training and the meaning of strength within a Christian framework of human dignity and flourishing. The empirical component investigated the effects of a four-week progressive resistance training intervention on global self-esteem and physical self-concept among undergraduate university students with moderate-to-low baseline self-esteem. Eleven participants (N = 11; 20.15 ± 1.52 yrs) completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and Physical Self-Description Questionnaire Short Form (PSDQ-S) before and after the intervention, with muscular strength assessed via submaximal testing across the squat, bench press, deadlift, …

A Terrible Tranquility: John Adams, Christian Stoicism, And The Architecture Of American Virtue, William E. Shook

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

This paper challenges the historiographical binary of a “secular” versus “Christian” American founding by examining the intellectual architecture of John Adams during his formative early years. It argues that Adams did not possess a static or fully articulated dogma but instead engaged in a dynamic, lifelong struggle to define virtue amid profound socio-political upheaval. To resolve the tension between the grandeur of Enlightenment liberalism, pagan classical ideals, and his own Christian faith, Adams forged a pressurized personal philosophy: a “Christian Stoicism.” Drawing on a close reading of his private Diary and Autobiography, this study demonstrates that his inherited Puritan …

Shepherds In The Great War: The Evolution Of The U.S. Army Chaplaincy And The Service Of Malcolm Taylor In World War I, Sydney Gilbert

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

From its beginnings in 1775, the U.S. military chaplaincy has been a vital but often overlooked component of the American military experience. Though the specific duties, expectations, and regulations for U.S. chaplains have evolved over time, the heart of the chaplaincy is rooted in sacrificial service, a ministry of presence, spiritual leadership, and moral guidance. The American entrance into the Great War in 1917 marked a period of exponential growth for the military chaplaincy as it faced unprecedented demand and growing professionalization. To meet the needs of the modern era warfare, a major shift occurred within the chaplaincy as it …