Digital Commons Network^™

Neoliberalism & The Care Economy: Exploring The Gendered Impacts Of Social Protection Systems, Rachel Carruthers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how neoliberal transformation of social protection policy influences gender dynamics within the care economy. Care is necessary for well-being, but traditionally excluded from economic thinking. This thesis completes a historical overview of how care has been incorporated or excluded by different economic paradigms and is anchored in feminist political economy that emphasizes care as a central consideration. A comparative analysis across California, Texas, and Sweden demonstrates how social protection, specifically access to paid parental leave, varies across regimes and results in inconsistent care outcomes. The findings suggest that social protections can reduce some inequalities, but inadequately address …

Navigating Filipino-American Identity Through Philippine Foodways, Jenelle Kirsten De Leon

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines the complexity of Filipino-American identity and investigates how Philippine foodways can function as a meaningful pathway for cultural understanding, identity formation, and intergenerational connection. Shaped by colonization, cultural hybridity, generational divides, and limited representation in Western education and media, Filipino-American identity is often difficult to define and navigate, leaving many individuals without accessible entry points to explore their culture, history, traditions, and more.

Through an analysis of existing literature, primary research, and a survey of Filipino-American youth, this study finds that Filipino cuisine operates as a powerful site of cultural and historical knowledge. The narratives embedded within …

Otherness And The Trinity: Toward A Critical Reimagining Of Christian Divinity From A Postcolonial Ethos, Taylor Muma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I address the Trinity’s potential as an emancipatory relational archetype in the philosophy of religion, while at the same time recognizing the complicity of Christian doctrine in colonial conquest. My dissertation will be a reimagining of trinitarian theology as an ecotonal paradigm of multiplicity and alterity that provides a generative means of moving beyond the enmeshment of divinity with constructs of mastery.

The post-structuralist and postcolonial methodologies in this project emerge from the work of such scholars as Homi Bhabha, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Gloria Anzaldúa. They foreground critical ideations of otherness and multiplicity in ways …

The Permanent Emergency: The Anti-Fascist And Anti-Colonial Intersections Of James Joyce’S Ulysses And Roberto Bolaño’S 2666, Lily V. Mcmanamy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is going to explore the (Irish) Anti-Colonial and (Spanish) Anti-Fascist parallels between James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (2004). Using the major epic novels of two exiled authors, I hope to explore the intersections of poetic fiction and political resistance. I read these texts as bookends spanning the pre- and post-war periods, highlighting the continuities of colonialism, totalitarianism, and fascism, and the way these authors develop a post/modernist narrative that nods towards these themes. I plan to draw on Alberto Toscano’s LateFascism (2023) as a means of situating these authors’ novels with our own political moment …

Staging Reception / Perception: Transhistorical Bi-Directional Dialogues Between Etruscan Visual Cultural Objects And Giuseppe Penone's Contemporary Sculptures, Shelby Morgan

University Honors Theses

I use the occasion of the March 2024 exhibit,"Vulci. Goods for Mankind. Goods for Gods." at Milan's Luigi Rovati Foundation to consider how the museum's staging of Etruscan visual material cultural objects and contemporary sculptures by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone prompts viewers to perceive transhistorical bi-directional dialogues between the viewer and material culture as well as between the ancient and contemporary objects themselves.

Via a close reading of the exhibition while leveraging the three frameworks of aura, imprint and classical reception I analyze how the staging of the hypogeum creates a place of atmosphere. I argue this is done through …

She Believed She Could, So She Did: A Lifecycle Approach To Understanding Leadership And Self-Efficacy Development In Women Astronauts, Savanah Faith Sellars Bray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how women leaders develop and sustain self-efficacy, and develop as leaders, throughout their lives. Although decades of research document the barriers women face navigating leadership journeys, including the challenges described in the Women’s Leadership Labyrinth of prejudice, discrimination, and childcare issues, existing literature offers limited insight into how women actively build belief in their capacity to lead and accomplish their goals. Further, research consistently shows that women report lower leadership self-efficacy than men, even with comparable experience, yet the developmental processes that shape this gap, beginning in childhood, remain underexplored. Guided by self-efficacy research and its four …

Reseeding Relations: Comparing Museum And Indigenous Seed Sharing & Rematriation Protocols In The Midwestern United States, Madeline G. Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) paved the way for the repatriation of ancestors and certain cultural objects to Indigenous communities, museums still struggle to address other forms of cultural returns. Heritage seeds, those which hold cultural significance to Indigenous peoples, held within museum collections perpetuates the colonization of Indigenous lifeways. This research examines rematriation as an Indigenous form of cultural return better suited to address these needs than limited repatriation models. I analyze how museums are working to create rematriation processes for their collections which reflect diverse Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies through a three-tiered approach: …

Defying Impossibility: Critical Qualitative Reorientations To Black Lgbtqia+ Sense Of Belonging, Olivia H. Hunte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Belonging is a human need central to survival and can be cultivated within all spheres of life. Social environments are vital for experiencing a sense of belonging. In some social environments, Black LGBTQIA+ people encounter greater impediments to their daily lives with consequences for survival, including threatening their belonging needs. Within the United States, systems of oppression create and inform conditions within social environments that can potentially thwart pathways to belonging for Black LGBTQIA+ people. Thus, fulfillment of belonging needs for Black LGBTQIA+ people is one of nuance, pain, resilience, hope, harm, trauma, resistance, and healing; scant research is available …

Napoleon Iii, Bimetallism, And The Latin Monetary Union In The European Movement For Universal Coinage, 1865-1878, Jack Salerno

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Between 1865 and 1878, Emperor Napoleon III of France attempted to use the Latin Monetary Union (LMU) to attain power via a universal, bimetallic European coinage system, but ultimately failed due to the preference for the gold standard within the wider movement for a universal coinage. In my research, I examine the International Monetary Conferences of 1865 and 1867, and explore the political landscape of France in the years leading up to the creation of the LMU, focusing on the Napoleonic echoes of the Second French Empire as instrumental factors in the LMU’s design. I argue that Napoleon III’s Empire …

The Good Knight, Elektra Koozer

University Honors Theses

The Good Knight is a comics adaptation of Sir Galahad's story through the lens of a queer retelling. This story focuses on queer relationships, struggling with depression and isolation, and death. It begins at the end of Galahad's life, where he is forced to question his legacy and who he is after completing the quest that has dictated his whole life. The story weaves through time, reflecting upon his past, thinking about his mother's expectations of him, being chosen for the grail quest, confronting his estranged father, and trying to cope with the world on his shoulders. He has to …

Will Beauty Save The Brain? Exploring The Relationship Between Eudaimonic Reels Exposure And Egyptian Gen Z'S Mind And Motivations, Petra Zaky

Theses and Dissertations

Social media entertaining content includes a mixed bag of the meaningful and the trivial. For Generation Z, whose favorite daily entertainment is shallow yet funny short-form videos (reels), there is often an invisible price paid. The loss of ability to watch long meaningful videos, distractedness from self, “Brain Rot”, glamorizing of hedonism are among the maladies left behind the attractive rabbit hole of their daily media diet. This study explores the relationship between exposure to meaningful reels, in contrast to pleasurable reels, and Gen Z’s reflective thinking, “Brain Rot” symptoms, motivation to watch long meaningful videos and life motivations between …

Women And Wars: Understanding Women’S Political Empowerment Post- Conflict In France, Lebanon, And Sierra Leone, Alaa S. Sayed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempts to discusses how conflict can be a time of change for women and how conflict can be a crucial aspect for change and improvement. Conflict provides a chance for the women to witness and experience the disruption of gender roles, which was a common practice during wartime, as women were placed in roles that were not officially theirs, according to what society adheres to or ascribes as acceptable roles for women. The conflict is presented as a “window” of opportunity. However, the reality of the situation of this “window” is not uniform across all post-conflict societies; the …

Breaking The Silence: A Content And Expert Analysis Of The 2025 Ramadan Series Lam Shamseya's Framing And Subversion Of Child Sexual Abuse Discourse In Egypt, Maya Abouelnasr

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how the 2025 Egyptian TV series Lam Shamseya served as a sociocultural intervention and awareness platform for reframing and subverting the typical child sexual abuse (CSA) discourse in Egypt. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study triangulates framing theory and two complementary tools of the critical discourse analysis (CDA) and the circuit of culture model through a scene-level content analysis of 304 scenes across all 15 episodes of the series and ten semi-structured interviews with media experts, media practitioners, and psychologists. Key findings include reported corroboration of subversion of traditional tropes and archetypes, as well as reframing of …

"Il-Lingwa Tal-Kċina": The Advocacy For The Maltese Language, 1930s–1940s, Elisabeth Fiorini

Lawrence University Honors Projects

In this project I investigate the understudied history of Malta and the Maltese language, focusing on the period of the Second World War. Going through newspaper archives and survivors’ accounts, I untangle the complex cultural shifts occurring in the British Colony of Malta, specifically with language. I argue that it was the intense bombing campaign of Fascist Italy––and later Nazi Germany––that led to the Maltese people to finally reject the Italian language and embrace their indigenous language along with British influences. This paper goes into the complex political and colonial history, looking at the British led breakdown of the diglossic …

Forced Dependency: The Subjugation Of Women Through Medicine In Ancient Greece And Rome, Evelyn J. Polovich

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

In the ancient Mediterranean men were in charge of every facet of life, including women’s medicine. They forced women out of the oversight of gynecology and reformed it into a method of control that they could assert in order to force women into a position of submission. This paper aims to bring the ways in which ancient medicine was influenced by cultural ideas and worked to subjugate women and allow men to gain further control over their autonomy. This research was inspired by the works of ancient physicians like Hippocrates, Soranus, and Galen, as well as contemporary sources that critique …

The Intertidal Zone As Never-Ending Painting, Alison Shields

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

An intertidal zone, the area where the ocean meets the land is, by definition, in a constant state of change. As the tides move in and recede daily, the ecosystem continuously transforms as new stimuli are washed in and out, prompting constant motion. Tide pools are thus mini worlds, rhythmically changing throughout the days. I similarly view a painting as an ever-changing ecosystem, each layer responding to new elements while always evolving in relation to what came before. Throughout the past decade, I have sought out a space of not knowing, uncertainty and emergence through the development of both physical …

Attending The Way Of The Crane: Centring Our Lives Through Creative-Centred Work, Alexandra Fidyk

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

A dreamscape using pastiche is used for reflecting upon the value of creative-centred practice and research. Attending to the image through reflection and circumambulation offers entry to a centring practice. In holding both, a new image emerged. The dreamscape—an unexpected scene of cranes in joyous dance—unfolds as actual dream and offers a metaphor for understanding an arc within the dreamer’s life. In this condensed yet nuanced rumination, personal and professional, poetic and haptic, participating and witnessing blur. This practice, the way of the Crane, is timely because it introduces relational pedagogy and testimonial teaching for our times—while touching the pulse …

The Verge, Reconsidered: Love, Salt, Seed, Time, Origin, Interweave––Triptychs In Conversation Across Time, Marna Hauk

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Sparked particularly by the poetic and the emergent data conversation analysis from an earlier Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal article (Hauk & Kippen, 2020) piece, which discussed data from 2016, the author creates a contemporary “conversation” from visual and poetic material, in 2026, and imagines forward a further 10 years to 2036. The three-plated visual-poetic artworkings speak also back and forth across the verges of spacetimemattering, riding the dip and wave, tide and weave, of deeper time and meaning sensing, with visual and poetic material. The original article proposed collaborative workings with other researchers. This work imagines the artworkings and …

Performance Arteries: From The Street To The Salon, Zoella Lin

Comparative Literature Undergraduate Senior Theses

This thesis concerns itself with navigating what it means to build community during a time of uncertainty. Specifically, it is an analysis of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry in Les Fleurs du mal and Spleen de Paris alongside his figure of the flâneur as a way to understand the aporia of the modern world (modernity) as a way to inform how instances of connection can occur. The first chapter suggests that a close reading of Baudelaire's poetry gives us insight into what it means to live in this present moment by looking at how Baudelaire’s poet-flâneur navigated the rapidly changing world of …

The Influence Of Gustav Holst's The Planets On The Music Of John Williams, Kara Lewis

Senior Honors Theses

Throughout his six-decade career in film music, John Williams has achieved incredible success. Yet, one of the most prominent criticisms of Williams’ work is that it borrows heavily from classical repertoire. It is common to read that Williams stole from composers such as Gustav Holst. This paper examines in what aspects and to what extent the music of Williams takes inspiration specifically from Holst’s The Planets. Overall style and specific excerpts will be compared to demonstrate that, while the two share some characteristics, there is not an overall sameness of style. It shall also be demonstrated that certain excerpts …

Stages Of Belonging: The Yiddish Art Theatre’S Search For Its Home In New York City, 1918-1934, Octavia Chudnow

Lawrence University Honors Projects

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the main form of entertainment for the Jewish immigrant community was shund (trash) theater: popular and commercial theater. Although many immigrants enjoyed this kind of entertainment, playwrights, artists, and intellectuals critiqued its place in immigrants’ lives, especially since shund revealed the process of assimilation and was considered low-brow art. In 1918, Maurice Schwartz opened the Yiddish Art Theatre to create high-brow art for Jewish audiences. In my essay, I focus on the company’s history between 1918 and 1934, on the theater’s move from downtown to Midtown and back to the Lower East …

"Everyone Leaves Me Behind”: How Harmful Tropes In Fiction Impact Autistic Women, Sara E. Allard

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Until now, females with ASD have been ignored by healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the general public. The unique presentation of autistic women and girls is now in the cultural spotlight within not just the advocacy and scientific community, but also the arts. Female autistic characters are getting increased representation across literature and television, yet their narratives are still often stuck in the past. Most authors and screenwriters have yet to understand the specific struggles that female autistics face compared to their male counterparts, relying on the outdated, reductive perceptions that have plagued them for decades.

This article outlines three harmful …

Living Through Misinformation: An Autoethnography Of Autism In Chinese Communities, Joy Lu

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This critical autoethnographic essay examines how misconception, misinformation, and disinformation shape understandings of autism within Chinese communities and produce tangible harm for autistic individuals and their families. Drawing on lived experience, advocacy work, digital observation, and cross-cultural analysis, it explores how language, medical practices, social media, and professional authority sustain persistent misrepresentation.

The essay argues that this misinformation is not merely the result of ignorance, but a socially reinforced and institutionally supported system of knowledge. By situating personal encounters within broader cultural and structural contexts, it highlights the interconnected roles of language, power, and exclusion in shaping autistic lives. It …

Misinformation, Misattunement, And Autistic Theatre: Representation, Access, And Cultural Harm, Sarah J. Nuttall, Jessica Telling

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This article explores how autistic people experience theatre, showing that exclusion often comes not from individuals but from the way theatre spaces are designed and understood. Using audience feedback from Chameleon (Telling, 2025), an autistic-led production, we look at how common ideas about autism shape both what audiences expect to see on stage and how autistic people are treated in the theatre. Misinformation sets expectations about how autistic people should look, behave, and communicate, and these expectations influence how autistic presence is interpreted. We show how casting autistic performers, designing sensory‑aware environments, and inviting ongoing audience feedback can challenge these …

Pretty Much From Scratch: A Braided Essay On Autistic Diagnosis, Creativity, Identity, And Community, Jenée Stanfield

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This braided essay uses memoir and research to explore autistic diagnosis, creativity, identity, and community. It examines how the misinformation around these topics harm and “other” autistics: the fallacy of diagnostic objectivity/neutrality, the dual myths of autistic hyper- and hypo-creativity, and autism as an identity defined solely by medical professionals. The memoir sections play with point of view and genre.

Jenée is a late-realized autistic with ADHD and OCD, who identifies as neurodivergent and neuroqueer. She lives in Washington state with her spouse and dog. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and is currently a Master …

The Unexpected Gift: Using Hip-Hop And Autoethnographic Methods To Challenge The “Symbolic Death” Discourse Of A Child’S Autism Diagnosis, Adam Ellis

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This article explores the social construction of autism through an autoethnographic account of parenting an autistic child in Canada. Drawing on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s grief model, neurodiversity scholarship, and post-traumatic growth theory, the paper examines how parents may experience grief, uncertainty, and the collapse of imagined futures following an autism diagnosis, while also arguing that much of this distress is produced by ableist and deficit-oriented social systems rather than autism itself. Using arts-based research, including a rap song and music video, the article explores: (1) what it is like to receive an autism diagnosis as a parent; (2) the grieving process …

Techwork: Developing And Validating A Reflective Tool For Impact-Aware Design, Sihui Wu, Marirena Kladeftira, Kim Helmersen, Gudela Grote

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Most assessments of technology impact occur only after its deployment, limiting the ability to address unintended social, cultural, and organizational effects. This paper introduces TechWork, a prospective and reflective tool for evaluating emerging technologies within existing work systems. Grounded in reflective practice tradition, socio-technical systems theory, and contemporary work design research, TechWork guides interdisciplinary teams through structured prompts and impact mappings to examine how their own design choices influence autonomy, skills, collaboration, and job demands. The tool was tested through design-education workshops in an architectural studio, applied to vernacular construction practices where embodied expertise and cultural knowledge are central to …

Opening Portals To The Posthuman: A Pedagogical Framework For Materializing Philosophy, Carlos Henrique Araujo De Aguiar

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper critiques dominant design pedagogies for their alignment with positivist and modernist paradigms, which limit design’s capacity for serious philosophical inquiry. It argues that Speculative and Critical Design (SCD) pedagogy offers an alternative philosophy, functioning as a powerful method for fomenting critical engagement by enabling students to materialize abstract concepts. Drawing on a case study from an undergraduate course on human-robot-cyborg relations, the paper employs the metaphor of 'portals' to analyse three thematic case studies. Each portal opens onto a distinct philosophical debate: the nature of reality and the self, the biopolitics of the body, and the networked subject. …

User-Centered Dread: A Lovecraftian Critique Of Design, Lewis Urquhart, Emma Lawrie

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper offers a speculative critique of contemporary design practice through the lens of Lovecraftian horror by critically interrogating assumptions embedded in user-centered design theory. Drawing on the oeuvre of 'weird fiction' author H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmically pessimistic mythologies, this paper explores three thematic dimensions - control, user unknowability, alien materiality - to reveal the limitations of human-centred design paradigms. Utlising examples from literature, film, and everyday experience, this critique demonstrates how design’s aspirational narratives, centered on mastery, empathy, and progress, are increasingly inadequate in addressing the complexities of a more-than-human world. The concept of 'user-centered dread' emerges as a central …

Designing Safer School Routes In Busan, South Korea: Living Lab Approach To Child-Centered Traffic Safety, Yong-Ki Lee

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Urban traffic environments in Busan, South Korea, often remain poorly adapted to the needs of children, despite infrastructure-based safety measures. This paper reports on a Living Lab project for co-creating safer school commuting environments through participatory service design. Researchers, elementary school students, parents, residents, and local authorities collaboratively identified critical issues, generated design ideas, and evaluated context-specific interventions. This paper synthesizes the Living Lab as both a methodological framework and a civic learning ecosystem by tracing how stakeholders’ perceptions, roles, and capacities evolved through iterative co-design, mapping, and prototyping activities. The findings highlight the potential of Living Labs to bridge …