Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

La Maleta Siempre Lista: Libertad, Identidad Y Legado Político Dentro De Una Familia Cubanoamericana, Aidan H. Jammer

World Languages and Cultures

This project explores how memories of the Cuban Exile are transmitted through generations and how these memories can influence a Cuban American family’s cultural identity and political beliefs. The documentary was based around interviews with members of my family from different generations. My investigation was mainly centered around the generation that lived through the Cuban Revolution and Exile, immigrated to the US and started a family in another country, sharing their memories, values and beliefs of Cuba with their children and grandchildren.

In addition to the interviews, the project incorporates historical research about the Cuban Revolution, the first waves of …

El Diseño Sin Género Como Tendencia Futura: La Cerámica Como Un Ejemplo Sin Sesgo, Paulina Luna Pérez, Hans Mayr Juárez

GDI. Revista de investigación de Género, Diseño e Innovación

Este artículo analiza el diseño sin género a través del análisis histórico de tradiciones cerámicas influyentes y utensilios específicos del uso cotidiano. El objetivo es examinar si las asociaciones entre los utensilios cerámicos y el género constituyen cualidades inherentes a su diseño o si corresponden a una construcción cultural producida en el proceso de interpretación social. Metodológicamente se realizó un análisis histórico-comparativo de piezas representativas y tradiciones cerámicas específicas de la cultura china y japonesa, particularmente utensilios de uso común y surgidos durante los inicios de la tradición cerámica en ambas culturas. Este estudio consideró cuestiones funcionales, formales, simbólicas y …

Violencia Cosificadora Contra Las Mujeres En La Era De La Ia Generativa: Sesgos, Poder Y Deshumanización Digital, Norma Mildret Pérez Alvarado

GDI. Revista de investigación de Género, Diseño e Innovación

La expansión de la Inteligencia Artificial generativa ha facilitado la producción y difusión masiva de imágenes no consentidas de mujeres y niñas, incluidas representaciones sexualizadas y formas de cosificación digital que pueden generarse y viralizarse con mínimos costos y barreras técnicas. Estas prácticas amplifican la escala y velocidad de la violencia basada en imágenes, al hacerla más accesible, replicable y difícil de contener.

El presente artículo sostiene que esta problemática no se agota en los deepfakes sexuales o en la denominada “desnudificación” digital de fotografías de mujeres. También comprende la generación de imágenes cosificadoras de mujeres que, aun sin contenido …

Atomized English: Fewer Whole Books, More Isolated Learning Experiences, Andrew Newman, Jonna Perrillo, Jeremiah Piña

Department of English Faculty Publications

This white paper presents findings from the State of Literature Instruction National Survey, administered online to secondary English Language Arts (ELA) teachers during the 2024-25 school year. An analysis of approximately 1250 responses demonstrates three key findings: 1) Classes that read whole books are associated with more “social learning” pedagogies; 2) Classes under test pressure are less likely to engage in social learning pedagogies and more likely to offer atomized learning experiences, emphasizing individual, decontextualized skill development; and 3) Digital texts are more likely to be assigned in classes that experience test pressure. We find equity gaps between student identity …

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 Soviet New Wave: A Comparative Analysis, Katarina Parks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis aims to assert the Soviet New Wave into the global New Wave cinema movements of the late 1950s and 1960s. Focusing on three Soviet films—Marlen Khutsiev's I Am Twenty (1965) and July Rain (1967), and Georgiy Daneliya's I Walk the Streets of Moscow (1964)—this study proposes that these works fully commit to the New Wave expression in form, sensibility, and content, despite the aggressive censorship of Soviet authority. By comparing the Soviet films with the French Nouvelle Vague, as well as with British, Polish, and Czechoslovakian New Wave cinemas, the thesis identifies recurring motifs: the centering of young …

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 …

Monsters In The Gutter: Queerness And Family In Graphic Novels, Maren Beriss

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis I read two graphic novels together: My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris and Black Hole by Charles Burns. Although the stories are quite different, they mirror each other quite closely: Burns’ story takes place in a homogenous suburb; Ferris’ is set in a diverse part of Chicago. Both deal with what it means to be a monster, but in different ways. Ferris has a clear framework of the different kinds of monsters – good, bad, and villager – which is at times helpful but often too narrow. Yet reading Burns with this lens in mind …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Contrastive Analysis Of Interrogative Words Between The Arabic And Indonesian Languages And Its Contribution To Teaching Arabic Grammar For Non-Native Speakers, Muh Sabilar Rosyad, Aulia Habibah, Muhammad Afthon Ulin Nuha

Al-Arabi: Journal of Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language

Every language has a style of speech that differs from one language to another, as well as question words in Arabic and Indonesian which have similarities and differences. The differences between the two can hinder the learning process and make students feel difficult because they transfer the forms and meanings of their language and culture into the language and culture they learn. This process is called linguistic overlap, and to address this problem requires a contrastive analysis. This study aims to find out the question words in Arabic and Indonesian and to describe the differences and similarities between the two. …

Aphrodite In Movement And Miniature: Knidian Statuettes Of The Ancient And Modern, Jacqueline M. Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines Hellenistic statuettes of the Knidian Aphrodite as independent works of art with distinct ancient contexts and modern collecting histories. Drawing on archaeological evidence from Delos, archival and public records from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a comparative framework that places Hellenistic and modern collecting cultures in dialogue, this thesis aims to present the Knidia within the dynamic, interactive history of statuettes. Evaluated on its own terms rather than in relation to a lost original, Knidian Aphrodite statuettes illuminate both the richness of Hellenistic domestic religious life and …

“A Chill Wind Sweeps The High Places”: Audre Lorde’S And June Jordan’S Black Feminist Pedagogies For Remaking Higher Education, Maddie Albanese

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this paper, I center the University as one site for radical pedagogy towards social justice.  This paper examines texts written on anti-racist, anti-sexist educational movements within the City University of New York, as well as archival materials from CUNY professors on the topic of radical, social justice-oriented learning. Conor Tomás Reed’s 2023 book New York Liberation School is one recent text on how CUNY activists dismantled the distinction between the University and its surrounding community, inextricably linking academic work with social-political activism. I take his extensive history of CUNY in tandem with various pedagogies developed by CUNY feminist educators …

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 …

Buttressing Britain’S Financial Rise: Anglo-Dutch Brokers In Eighteenth-Century London, Jiwon Han

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of the eighteenth century, British financial markets developed remarkably and London established itself as the financial center of Europe, replacing Amsterdam. Scholarship on Britain’s financial developments in the eighteenth century has largely understood it as the result of British efforts and innovation. This dissertation complicates that understanding by investigating the Anglo-Dutch merchants in eighteenth-century London and their contributions to the development of British financial markets. In particular, their support was essential for the British government’s war finances, because Britain’s continuous wars against France demanded an immense amount of money and credit while its financial markets were still …

Le Féminin-Fantastique: Entre Construction Symbolique Et Figuration De L’Altérité. Étude Des Figures Féminines Surnaturelles Dans La Littérature Fantastique Française Du Xixe Siècle, Ivana Prelevic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the féminin-fantastique in nineteenth-century French literature, arguing that supernatural female figures—vampires, animated objects, and revenantes—form a symbolic system through which the century negotiates anxieties surrounding sexuality, materiality, subjectivity, capitalism, mortality, and historical memory. Drawing on theoretical frameworks including Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, Barbara Creed’s monstrous-feminine, Marxist analyses of commodity fetishism, Freudian mourning, Derridean hauntology, and Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism, the study analyzes works by Gautier, Féval, Mérimée, Maupassant, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, and Nodier. Through three thematic axes—the female vampire, the animation of feminine objects, and the female revenant—the dissertation demonstrates how the supernatural feminine destabilizes …

Managing Migration And Political Change: Lessons From Sweden’S 2015 Asylum Crisis For South Korea’S Emerging Immigration Era, Sean Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this capstone project is to analyze how two nations that have little in common in terms of geography or politics have been required to deal with immigration issues in ways that their institutions did not anticipate. One nation has been dealing with immigration-related issues for some time now, while the other nation has yet to do so. In 2015, when Sweden received approximately 162,000 asylum applications in one year alone, Sweden’s housing systems were strained, many of the municipalities were unable to keep up with the demand, and the political climate began to shift in ways that …

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.

Reimagining Puerto Rican Sonic Identity: Musical Style And Creation After Hurricane María., Gabriel E. Bouche Caro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the manifestation of Puertorriqueñidad (Puerto Rican identity) in concert music composed after Hurricane María (2017), a catastrophe that catalyzed a profound shift in Puerto Rico's cultural consciousness. Focusing on four composers whose early careers were shaped by this period—Johanny Navarro, John Rivera Pico, Iván E. Rodríguez, and Christian Quiñones—the study combines close readings of scores and recordings with extensive original interviews to understand how musical identity is constructed in the wake of collective trauma. The analysis reveals that while the composers share a generational bond, their aesthetic practices are strikingly diverse: Navarro preserves Afro-Caribbean rhythmic structures, Rivera …

Contesting The Sacred: Ideology And Church Music Reform In Spain, 1850–1900, Francisco J. Legasa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that sacred-music reform in Spain between 1850 and 1900 was not a unified movement culminating in the 1903 Motu proprio, but a contest between two distinct and contemporaneous programs. The first, associated with Hilarión Eslava, affirmed musical expression and artistic progress, embraced stylistic eclecticism, and sought to rebuild musical institutions, modernize pedagogy, and forge alliances with civic life. It drew on Romantic thought that attributed to music a distinctive capacity to mediate religious experience. The second, aligned with Roman ultramontanism, held that Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony were the only legitimate models for sacred music and that …

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 …