Digital Commons Network^™

Love & Mercy: Records Of Self, Change, And Relationship, Jessie Perryman

Sociology Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Talking Black: The Construction Of Blackness In Film, D'Andre M. Person

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Media, such as film, plays a pivotal role in representing marginalized groups to general audiences. The portrayal of Black people in advertisements, novels, art, and film has perpetuated harmful stereotypes which associate Black men and women with negative traits that justify their marginalization, such as the "Coon" stereotype that frames Black men as lazy or the "Mammy" stereotype that positions Black women as subservient. Stereotypes in film are produced through images, but language plays a vital role in constructing general audiences' understanding of Black people as well. Through a rhetorical analysis of seven films released between 2016 and 2026, I …

Measuring Civic And Citizenship Education Through Large-Scale Assessments: Insights From The International Civic And Citizenship Education Study (Iccs), Wolfram Schulz, Valeria Damiani

Civics and Citizenship Assessment

This chapter from the open access book ‘Promoting K-12 Civic Learning and Engagement Through Assessment’ edited  by Hamilton, Rikoon and  Kidd, discusses ways of measuring aspects of civic and citizenship education (CCE) cross-nationally with a specific focus on the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) commissioned by the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement). The chapter starts with a brief overview of the main characteristics of the study, the legacy with previous IEA surveys of civic education, and the assessment design including a description of the cognitive and affective-behavioral dimensions that are measured in the …

The Paradox Of Intellectual Property At The U.S. Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court is dramatically more politically polarized in the Roberts Court era, and the justices have been criticized for highly ideological and partisan decision-making. Yet, we show that there is one area of law that is becoming less ideologically divided and predictable: intellectual property (IP). In an earlier study, we showed that, prior to the Roberts Court, IP case outcomes were predictable based on judicial ideology, with more conservative justices embracing IP rights, as they do for real property. In the last two decades, IP has become more influential on the economy and society, through the increasing dominance of …

The Political Disconnect: Working-Class And Low-Income People On What Politics Means To Them And How They Might Be Mobilized, Daniel Laurison, Kelly Diaz, Monica Guzman , '25, Zachary Kreines , '25, Kaj Tug Lee , '25, Lydia Orr, Sahiba Tandon , '25

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Works

A functioning democratic society must involve all kinds of people in deciding who will hold the power to enact laws and allocate tax dollars. However, working-class and low-income people vote at significantly lower rates than the more privileged in the US, and their participation has been declining in recent elections. In order to understand why those with fewer resources are less likely to vote and how this might change, a diverse group of researchers interviewed 232 low-income and working-class people (in every major racial group) from across Pennsylvania – 144 of whom either did not vote, or voted only occasionally. …

“… It's Google That's Big Brother”: The Symbiosis Between Icac Investigators And The Private Sector Regarding Encryption And Privacy, Christopher G. Brewer, Kevin F. Steinmetz, Don Kurtz, Brian Schaefer

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Encryption technologies have become ubiquitous for both individual and commercial sectors. Perhaps no realm of law enforcement is so acutely affected by encryption than cybercrime, including internet crimes against children (ICAC) personnel. There exist a variety of encryption-based tools and authentication measures available to help online child sexual abusers and consumers of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) hide their activities and obstruct law enforcement efforts to gather evidence of criminal activity. Established here is the idea that ICAC investigative practice is ultimately shaped by these technologies as well as the relationship between the distributors of these technologies and private platforms …

“If You Think This Vilifies The Police, Then You Think The Police Are Villains”: Teaching Reparations Won As An Antidote To Copaganda, Kaitlyn Selman, Hannah Carson Baggett, Justin Turner

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Building on prior research about copaganda and pro-police socialization, we argue that the Reparations Won curriculum in Chicago Public Schools is an antidote to police legitimization efforts in K-12 schools. Specifically, the curriculum affirms student experiences that are not accounted for nor deemed possible in a world built by and for policing; it emphasizes relationship-building and centers definitions of community that resist the alienation required for such a world; and it facilitates an understanding of local histories as inseparable from broader social structures. We conclude that in an era of contested curricula, Reparations Won provides the structure needed to grapple …

Social Perception Of Rural And Urban Lgbtq+ High School Students, Jordyn Gerwig

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other gender/sexual identities (LGBTQ+) have been subjects of research throughout history, impacting the way they are perceived socially. Experiences of LGBTQ+ people vary not only by person but also by geographic area (rural, urban, and suburban). The focus of this study is the social acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities in high schools in these geographic areas. The overall research question is as follows: How do LGBTQ+ students’ perceptions of social acceptance differ across urban, suburban, and rural high schools? It was hypothesized that students who attended rural schools will feel lower levels of social acceptance …

Facebooking Under Crisis: A Comparative Study Of Online French And American Mutual Aid Organizing During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Clare Reimers-Hejnal

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis studies the political discussions, practices, and projects that emerged through mutual aid Facebook groups based in France and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of particular interest is how these online spaces and the Facebook users that comprised them understood their mutual aid organizing in relationship to specific themes, including but not limited to: the COVID-19 pandemic as a "crisis", the role of government presence or absence in the wellbeing of the public, and the concept of collective yet differentiated struggle. Chapter 1 looks at four Facebook pages based in the greater Paris area: Entraide Danube, Clichy …

Caterpillar's Spatial Metamorphosis: Heavy Equipment Manufacturing In The 21st Century, Utkarsh Kumar, Michael L. Dougherty

Faculty Publications – Sociology and Anthropology

Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest heavy equipment manufacturer, grew rapidly in the 20th century before a crisis of overproduction in the early 1980s threatened its survival. In response, it launched the $2.8 billion “Plant with a Future” (PWAF) program, a sweeping material and ideological overhaul that remade the firm for the post-Fordist global economy. This article advances three interventions. First, it shows how post-Fordism as a spatial and ideological project emphasized decentralization, accountability, and customer orientation, which helped legitimize and institutionalize corporate restructuring. Second, it demonstrates that flexibilization operated as a spatial strategy, implemented through four interrelated processes: bureaucratic restructuring, …

When Does Sexual Image Exposure Constitute Child Sexual Abuse?: Definitional Inconsistencies, Paige B. Kenny

Honors Theses and Capstones

The following review examines how youth exposure to sexual images online is conceptualized and measured as abusive within epidemiological research on online child sexual abuse (OCSA). As digital environments reshape sexual socialization, scholars debate whether and when exposure to sexual content constitutes abuse. To address this issue, this study conducts a qualitative content analysis of 27 survey items drawn from 20 empirical studies of youth online experiences. Survey questions about sexual image exposure were coded across four dimensions: volition, personalization, image or text, and explicitness. Findings reveal significant definitional inconsistency. Many studies rely on ambiguous terms such as “sexual” or …

Exploring Biopsychosocial Influences On Hookup Culture And Disrupting Compulsory Behaviors In Emerging Adults: A Multidisciplinary Analysis Of A Contemporary Public Health Concern, Catherine Benjamin

Honors Theses and Capstones

Multidisciplinary analysis, including biology, psychology, and sociology, to better understand the compulsory Hookup Culture that exists as a contemporary public health concern among the age group defined as emerging adults. Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) diagnoses are steadily rising in the United States and disproportionately affecting college students. Early socialization and current educational resources that contribute to shame and stigma are discussed to explain how lifestyle and social conditions can act as risk factors for individual health outcomes.

Thailand’S Alignment Strategy Amidst The Us-China Rivalry : A Role Theory Perspective, Wen Chou Han

Journal of Social Sciences

This paper seeks to analyze how Thailand, as a middle power, navigates its alignment choices amid an intensifying US-China rivalry in the Asia-Pacific region through the lens of role theory. This paper also proposes several original mechanisms to operationalize the role theory in the analysis of Thailand’s strategy. To this end, Thailand’s foreign policy from the past decade (2012 to mid-2025) will be reviewed. The central argument is that Thailand is adopting a “soft hedging” strategy marked by opportunism and driven by its key goal of development, but is, at the same time, complicated by domestic political dysfunction (“fragmented centralism”). …

การสื่อสารทางการเมืองของนายกเทศมนตรีในการบริหารจัดการอุทกภัย : กรณีศึกษาเทศบาลนครยะลา, ปุญญวันต์ จิตประคอง

Journal of Social Sciences

บทความวิจัยนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อศึกษารูปแบบและกลยุทธ์การสื่อสารทางการเมืองของนายกเทศมนตรีนครยะลาในการบริหารจัดการอุทกภัย และวิเคราะห์ประสิทธิผลของกลยุทธ์การสื่อสารทางการเมืองที่มีต่อการสร้างการมีส่วนร่วมของประชาชน โดยใช้วิธีการวิจัยเชิงคุณภาพแบบกรณีศึกษา และเก็บรวบรวมข้อมูลผ่านการสัมภาษณ์เชิงลึกผู้ให้ข้อมูลหลัก 8 คน ประกอบด้วย นายกเทศมนตรีนครยะลา ปลัดเทศบาลนครยะลา หัวหน้าฝ่ายป้องกันและบรรเทาสาธารณภัยเทศบาลนครยะลา เจ้าหน้าที่ฝ่ายป้องกันและบรรเทาสาธารณภัยเทศบาลนครยะลา ผู้รับบริการและผู้มีส่วนได้ส่วนเสียในระดับชุมชนและการวิเคราะห์เอกสารที่เกี่ยวข้อง ได้แก่ แผนการบริหารจัดการอุทกภัย รายงานผลการดำเนินงาน และข้อมูลจากสื่อสังคมออนไลน์ จากนั้นวิเคราะห์ข้อมูลด้วยการวิเคราะห์เนื้อหาโดยใช้กรอบทฤษฎีการสื่อสารในภาวะวิกฤต แนวคิดการสื่อสารทางการเมือง และแนวคิดการสร้างความยืดหยุ่นของเมือง ผลการศึกษาพบรูปแบบการสื่อสาร 5 ลักษณะ คือ การสื่อสารหลายช่องทางแบบบูรณาการ (ดิจิทัล ช่องทางดั้งเดิม และนวัตกรรม IoT) การสื่อสารแบบเรียลไทม์ 3 ระยะ มีการแจ้งล่วงหน้า 8 ชั่วโมง การจัดวางตำแหน่งของเทศบาลเป็นศูนย์กลางข้อมูลที่สามารถชี้แจงต่อสาธารณะ และมีการเปิดเผยข้อมูล ผ่านกลไกต่าง ๆ ประกอบด้วย สภากาแฟ การดูงาน และการประสานผู้ช่วยชุมชน 44 คน และการสร้างเครือข่าย Win-Win กับองค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่น 20 แห่ง ส่งผลให้เกิดผลสัมฤทธิ์ที่สำคัญ 4 ด้าน ประกอบด้วย การเพิ่มการมีส่วนร่วม (ตัวแทนครัวเรือน 10,000 จาก 25,000 ครัวเรือน อาสาสมัคร 176 คน) การสร้างความไว้วางใจที่สั่งสม 20-21 ปี การเพิ่มประสิทธิภาพการรับมือภัยพิบัติ (ตอบสนองรวดเร็วกว่าหน่วยงานอื่น) และการพัฒนานวัตกรรมอย่างต่อเนื่อง ทั้งนี้ องค์ประกอบของความสำเร็จเกิดขึ้นมาจากความโปร่งใสและการแสดงให้เห็นการทำงานจริง การเปิดโอกาสให้ประชาชนมีส่วนในการตัดสินใจ การคัดเลือกตัวแทนแต่ละหมู่บ้าน การแก้ปัญหาข้ามเขตตามหลักการ Win-Win และบารมีของผู้บริหารที่สั่งสมมา ซึ่งคุณลักษณะดังกล่าวสามารถนำไปประยุกต์ใช้ในการพัฒนากระบวนการบริหารจัดการภัยพิบัติในพื้นที่อื่น ๆ ได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ

สิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วมของญี่ปุ่นในยุทธศาสตร์อินโด-แปซิฟิก : มุมมองยุทธศาสตร์การกระจายความเสี่ยงแบบการถ่วงดุลทางอ้อม, พรพิทักษ์ นิ่มอนงค์

Journal of Social Sciences

นายกรัฐมนตรีชินโซ อาเบะ ให้เหตุผลการยอมรับสิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วม (Collective Self-Defense : CSD) ว่า ภัยคุกคามต่อญี่ปุ่นกำลังทวีความรุนแรงรอบด้าน ทั้งขีปนาวุธจากเกาหลีเหนือ ข้อพิพาททางดินแดน รวมไปถึงการขยายอิทธิพลของจีนที่อาจเข้าแทนที่สหรัฐอเมริกาในภูมิภาค หากสถานะเดิม (Status quo) เปลี่ยนไป ญี่ปุ่นภายใต้รัฐธรรมนูญสันติภาพจะไม่อาจต่อสู้ได้เพียงลำพัง บทความชิ้นนี้ต้องการศึกษาพลวัตการใช้สิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วมของญี่ปุ่นในสมัยนายกรัฐมนตรีอาเบะ โดยศึกษาผ่านมุมมองการกระจายความเสี่ยง (Hedging) เพื่อตอบคำถามที่ว่า ญี่ปุ่นใช้สิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วมในยุทธศาสตร์อินโด-แปซิฟิกอย่างไร โดยเสนอว่า สิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วมช่วยเสริมสร้างการเป็นผู้สร้างสันติภาพเชิงรุกในเวทีโลก การกระชับความสัมพันธ์ด้านความมั่นคงกับพันธมิตรที่มีแนวคิดตามหลักนิติธรรมเหมือนกันนอกเหนือจากสหรัฐอเมริกา เป็นการกระจายความเสี่ยงโดยวิธีถ่วงดุลทางอ้อมให้ยังคงรักษาความสัมพันธ์อันดีกับจีนได้ ขณะเดียวกันก็แสดงถึงการกระจายความเสี่ยงแบบสองชั้นเพื่อลดการพึ่งพาสหรัฐอเมริกา และเล่นบทบาทนำมากขึ้น

Strategic Engagement And Legal Pluralism : Navigating Knowledge And Expertise In Mining Disputes, Sara K. Phillips

Journal of Social Sciences

This article explores how community and civil society actors in mining conflicts strategically engage with legal and technical vocabularies to assert legitimacy, contest exclusion, and influence mining governance. Drawing on an empirical case study of Thailand’s Chatree gold mine, the article analyzes how affected groups navigate overlapping normative systems, such as state law, transnational norms, and technocratic discourses, through informal learning and strategic appropriation of expert language. Framed through the conceptual lens of legal pluralism, the study highlights how actors interpret and mobilize diverse normative orders to articulate grievances, shape narratives, and attempt to gain access to decision-making spaces. These …

'Punishing Death Dealers': Examining Claims To Expand The Death Penalty To People Who Deal Drugs, Joshua H. Stout

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

In 1988, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act authorized the use of the death penalty for individuals who committed murder while involved in certain federal drug crimes. In recent years, as America has grappled with rising opioid overdose deaths, there has been an increase in calls for expanding murder charges and capital punishment for individuals who deliver drugs that result in an overdose death. Utilizing content analysis of news media and presidential speeches, this paper explores the claims-making process surrounding the arguments in favor of sentencing people who deal drugs to death during the 1980s and the contemporary opioid crisis. Findings demonstrate …

Introduction, Jenna Abdel-Kader, Hannah Desjardine

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Sociolinguistic Challenges To The Academic Inclusion Of Latin American Immigrants Of Legal Age And Spanish In High Schools In Minnesota: A Qualitative Study On The Learning Of English As A Second Language, Geanella Margarita Ochoa Veloz

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This research analyzes and exposes the experiences of Latin American adult migrants who, having recently arrived in the United States, have resumed their studies in high schools in the State of Minnesota as a strategy to learn the English language by immersion. The study was based on the contributions of the sociology of migration and the sociology of education, which, incorporating as a methodological strategy “the case study” combined with “the life story”, managed to collect and share reflections regarding the barriers faced by migrants during the process of adaptation and insertion into American society, thus adopting a critical approach. …

The Vestiges Of The German Democratic Republic: Memory Politics And Xenophobia In Former East Germany, Diana Zhou

CMC Senior Theses

From the 2015 migration influx onward, xenophobic and nationalist sentiments permeated Germany’s national political discourse. The former socialist territories in eastern Germany have proven particularly susceptible to far-right, anti-immigration, and anti-integration rhetoric. This thesis explores the mnemonic foundations of xenophobic sentiments in former East German states, tracing the development of an antifascist yet ethnically nationalist mnemonic framework to the state-sanctioned myths and invented traditions of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As the loss of a collective GDR identity produced a reactionary rehabilitation of this framework post-unification, the racial and ethnic “other” — migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees — became constructed …

System Disparities: Racial Criminalization And The Risk Of Coerced And False Confessions In Youth, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Black youth may be even more vulnerable than other youth to admitting to crimes they did not commit in the context of police interrogations. In support, analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations indicates that 65% of people who were wrongfully convicted on the basis of false confessions they gave when under 18 years old are Black, whereas only 14% of the U.S. population is Black. In this chapter, I seek to understand the overrepresentation of Black youth in samples of juvenile false confessors by examining the cultural stereotype about Black criminality in relation to both investigators and …

Resistance, Collaboration, And Ethnic Bias: Evidence On Social Cohesion In Wartime Ukraine, Janina Dill, Marnie Howlett, Carl Müller-Crepon, Mara Revkin

Faculty Scholarship

Interstate wars can rally societies around the flag, but they can also divide them based on individuals’ behavior and identities. Building on fieldwork in wartime Ukraine, we study the importance of collaboration and resistance, ethnic identity, and the interaction between behavior and identity. We examine how such divisions affect Ukrainians’ attitudes toward each other with two conjoint experiments (N=2,513). When choosing among potential neighbors, respondents prefer individuals who resisted over collaborators. However, two identity attributes—ethnic descent and exposure to Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory—activate biases that behavior alone does not fully overcome. Furthermore, we find that respondents value resistance less …

Eat With Understanding: A Um Student Guide To Food Systems, James Deacon, Cora Johnson, Lucas Dymit, Kaeli Rackham, Elsie Danyo

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The industrialized food system creates environmental harm, reduces food sovereignty, and contributes to growing food insecurity. These problems oftentimes are overlooked in higher education. To address this gap, our project examines how access to sustainable food education and campus-community partnerships can improve well-being and informed decision-making amongst University of Montana students. This collaborative project connects partners within UM Wellness, PEAS Farm, the Missoula Food Bank and Community Center, and the Big Sky Culinary Institute. Our research includes applied learning with these organizations by hosting a variety of speaker series presentations and coordinating a cooking workshop. We collected quantitative and qualitative …

The Influence Of Adverse Childhood Experiences On Female Violent Offending: A Scoping Systematic Review, Alexis M. Wolgemuth

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Female-perpetrated violence has exhibited concerning data trends in recent years. Prior scholarship indicates that past victimization and trauma in childhood, known as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), are highly prevalent among women offenders. However, the research concerning ACEs and violent females is scattered. This thesis provides a scoping literature review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) updated 2020 guidelines. A systematic database search was conducted using Academic Search Complete, SAGE Journals, Springer Nature Link, and HeinOnline to identify relevant peer-reviewed journal articles. Inclusion and exclusion criteria are established, focusing on studies published after January 2015. These …

Understanding Workplace Psychological Safety Among Latina Professionals: An Exploration Of Intersectional Experiences, Michal Tapia

Theses and Dissertations

Latina professionals represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. workforce, yet they remain disproportionately underrepresented in executive and C-suite roles. This disparity reflects structural conditions that shape access to voice, support, advancement, and decision-making authority.

This mixed-methods study examined psychological safety among 145 Latina professionals across the United States, defined as the belief that one can speak up, ask for help, disagree, or raise concerns without fear of negative consequences (Edmondson, 1999, 2019). The study explored how identity, relationships, leadership, workplace support, inclusion, mentorship, and structural barriers shape psychological safety at work.

Quantitative analyses showed that workplace support …

Mythology Of Whiteness: Constructing Black Girls As A Bully, Kathleen O'Brien, Pamela Twyman Hoff

Faculty Publications - College of Education

This analytical essay uses data from a qualitative study by O’Brien (2017) that explored the social construction of bullying. O’Brien interviewed 16 high school students enrolled in alternative and college-preparatory high schools. Although the study did not focus specifically on Black girls, their narratives surfaced a distinctly different story—one that exposed how whiteness, intersectional power, and cultural ways of knowing construct Black girls as quintessential bullies in schools. This re-analysis explores how Black girls are cast within the mythology of whiteness as archfoes—not merely as disruptive, but as symbolic antagonists whose existence threatens the normative order of whiteness …

Race, Sexual Danger, And The Moral Logic Of Punishment In The Registry Era, Edith Meade

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sex offender registries represent one of the most expansive and punitive criminal justice interventions in modern American history, yet public support for these policies remainsunderi nvestigated. Scholarly debate has questioned whether punitive attitudes toward sexual offenders reflect principled moral judgments, racial threat perceptions, or both. This study addresses that question by examining how offender race, offender age, offense severity, victim age, and offender-victim relationship shape public attitudes toward sexual offenders in the contemporary registry era. Drawing on theories of racialized sexual threat, group position, and retributive impulses, the study uses a nationally representative conjoint survey experiment administered through YouGov (N …

Artificial Intelligence And African Studies, Gloria Emeagwali

Comparative Civilizations Review

African Studies is a conglomerate of multidisciplinary academic fields that include paleontology, history, literature, linguistics, philosophy, African Traditional Religion and theology, art, and Afrofuturism, as well as African Indigenous Knowledge Systems. This paper focuses on the latter, namely African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS), and African Studies, in general, from the viewpoint of two chatbots, namely, ChatGPT-4, and DeepSeek v.3. Do these models make a break with Eurocentrism and prevent unbiased information on AIKS? Are the underlying conceptual issues underpinning AIKS fully grasped, and if so, what are some relevant examples of this accomplishment? How do these programs respond to specialized …

Civilizational Nationalism And The Rise Of The Civilization State: A Response To Stephen Satkiewicz, Nicholas Morieson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The previous issue of this journal discussed the phenomenon of civilization-states. As several authors observed, over the past two decades leaders from Beijing to Moscow, from New Delhi to Ankara, have increasingly portrayed the nations they govern as civilization states, or heirs to and continuations of great civilizations (Greenfeld 2025; Cross and Okunev 2025; Alalykin-Izvekov 2025; Satkiewicz 2025). In doing this, they often summon deep time, speaking of thousands of years of cultural continuity, and present their states as guardians of cultural traditions in an age of immense social change.

Genocide, Memory & Prevention: Ethical Inquiry And Critical Thinking Through Research & Ai, Linda Humes

Open Educational Resources

This assignment engages students in ethical inquiry and critical analysis by examining lesser-known or silenced genocides within a global and historical context. Using academic sources alongside responsible use of generative AI, students compare dominant and marginalized narratives, analyze recurring patterns and causes of genocide, and reflect on prevention strategies. The assignment emphasizes ethical AI use, historical memory, and the development of civic awareness, empathy, and critical thinking in the study of race, power, and inequality.