Digital Commons Network^™

Numb., Anna Rapson

Masters Theses

Social media platforms, from their conception, posed a break in the lived experience of the average human being’s day to day routines. Although access to information has always been shaped by portals into other lived realities—through photojournalism, print legacy media, news broadcasts both on radio and television—social media has posited a novel phenomenological architecture where borders between embodied reality and perception of lived experience are simultaneously blurred and reinforced. This morphed duality of consciousness positions the body and mind in tension, deconstructing pre-social media conceptions of the ontology of lived experience. In a digital world shaped by limitless input by …

Domestic Travelers: Transparent Machines, Hollow Bodies, Hanyi Wang

Masters Theses

Digitization is not a modern invention. Derived from the concept of fingers, this mindset of packing information into quantifiable, interchangeable units sounds mechanical, yet eerily physical. Try to imagine: a ghostly hand with millions of fingers with the same length, likeness, and function. Under the worldview of Digital Narrative, we live in a digital simulation: everything is representable with quantifiable units, fluid across media. Yet under this spectacle of convenient abundance, something is missing. The Unknowables are replaced with arbitrary symbols, while the Uncategorizables are omitted. This is a framework that cannot accommodate human subtleties and complexities. One needs to …

Reading Exercise (You Are The Hero): Dedicated To The Providence River Under The Mall, 02.17.2026, Deborah Fischer

Masters Theses

This play uses the performative potential of guilt, forgiveness, and self-help techniques as a catalyst for a new dynamic, one in which the pursuit of a false narrative, along with the structures it generates, becomes more real than reality itself. It employs “bad acting” and the practice of cold reading to stage a series of acts that function as an entry point into one’s own psyche, leveraging the peripheral space around familiar actions to allow chance, free will, and the experience of “real time” to temporarily come into effect. PLAYER 1: The bad actor is the most utopian one. CLOWN: …

The Body Has Its Own Time, Wen Zhang

Masters Theses

In embodied practice, the artist’s experience and body become the medium through which thought and expression take form, not as illustration, but as primary material. Performance art has long occupied an unstable position within contemporary art: celebrated in retrospect, underfunded in practice, and selectively institutionalized. Its marginality has never been evenly distributed. Certain bodies, female, racialized, aging, non-normative, have remained further outside the archive than others, their work harder to collect, harder to value, and easier to forget. To work in performance, particularly as a woman, is to work within that contradiction.

For me, performance is less a form than …

Material Costs, Karima Weinman

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how migration fatality and disappearance data can be reinterpreted through material craft to create a more reflective encounter with information. Working with the Missing Migrants Project's dataset, this project asks how design can communicate dimensions of human loss that conventional data visualization cannot reach.

The work situates contemporary border violence within a longer colonial history, arguing that the logics of surveillance and quantification that structured European imperial expansion persist in the databases that govern mobility in the Mediterranean today.

Terrazzo is a 15th-century Venetian flooring technique built from discarded fragments bound together into a unified surface. This …

Just Between Us (And Everyone We Tell...), Deborah Khodanovich

Masters Theses

Graphic designers are often obsessed with a broader public. The desire to be seen, to be heard, to have our work reach the broadest audience possible—these are goals deeply ingrained in our discipline. But why? Just Between Us (and everyone we tell…) challenges us to abandon this fixation, proposing instead that graphic design should concern itself with the private—the intimate, the local, the unseen.

This is where gossip comes in. Gossip is the language of the invisible, a form of sharing, and a means of knowledge-production and preservation that has historically been dismissed as frivolous, immoral, and—most egregious of all—associated …

Embodied Leadership And Conditional Legitimacy: Critically Conscious Male Leaders Navigating Systems Of Power, Luis A. Legaspi

Dissertations

Leadership is not a neutral concept; it is shaped by overlapping systems of power, including empire, whiteness, neoliberal capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy. These interlocking systems influence how leadership is defined, recognized, and legitimized, often privileging particular identities and forms of authority. The persistent underrepresentation of people of color, women, and queer individuals in positions of leadership reflects how dominant conceptions of leadership remain closely aligned with historically entrenched structures of power.

This critical narrative inquiry study examines how men, who disproportionately occupy positions of social and institutional authority, make meaning of masculinity, power, and leadership within these systems. Drawing on relational …

Burning Out: A Narrative Exploration Of The Adaptive Challenge And Scaffolds Built Toward Sustenance Among Immigrant Rights Activists In San Diego County, Anna C. Runion

Dissertations

Activist burnout has been identified as one of the greatest threats to social movement sustainability, and the lived experience of paid immigrant rights activists remains undertheorized. This narrative inquiry explored activist burnout among 10 San Diego County immigrant rights activists, revealing how this community understands burnout, what factors contribute to its production, and how activists sustain themselves within it. Using Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) narrative inquiry methodology, the researcher conducted in-depth individual interviews with ten activists representing a range of intersectional identities and roles. Narrative profiles were analyzed through holistic narrative reading, narrative reporting, structural and emergent coding, and cross-narrative …

The Educational Gender Gap Explored Through The Lens Of Hegemonic Masculinity, Marcell V. Csikos

University Honors Theses

Women's college attendance skyrocketed with the passing of Title IX, and by the eighties, college campuses featured men and women at an even fifty-fifty split. Today, women make up over fifty-seven percent of college students. It is not a new phenomenon, studies and surveys have shown that women are doing better at school for decades, but they rarely tie men's underperformance to the concept of masculinity. The study of hegemonic masculinity is an overarching theory that looks at the values, rules, and dynamics that men have to follow in order to keep their social status. This literature review uses said …

Adapting And Promoting Tourism For Children In Venice And The Lagoon Islands: A Comparative Analysis Of Food-Related Discourse Strategies In English And In Italian, Daniela Cesiri Prof.

International Journal of Islands Research

According to the latest available version of the Annual Tourism Survey drafted by the City of Venice, in 2023, 12,628,079 tourists visited Venice and the Lagoon Islands (Bettiol & Marini, 2025). This survey does not provide data on the age groups of these visitors, but they are available in the previous version of the same Survey (Bianchetto & Marini, 2022), which reports that 29% of tourists were in the 46-71 age group. Therefore, we can presume that, excluding the older age groups, quite a large proportion of visitors is likely composed of young tourists and families with children. This study …

Asian American Multiraciality And Cultural Wealth In Higher Education, Marielle Song Lyons

Master's Theses

Multiracial Asian American college students endure pervasive and commonplace monoracism, multiracial microaggressions, and deficit-based narratives in higher education, which negatively impact their sense of self, belonging, and mental health. Through narrative methodology, the present qualitative study captures the stories of three multiracial Asian American undergraduate students and how they are making sense of their racialized experiences and cultural wealth in higher education. The results of this study suggest that (a) multiracial Asian Americans experience monoracism and multiracial microaggressions, which shape their understanding of cultural legitimacy and impact their behavior, sense of self, and relationships with others; (b) monoracism and multiracial …

Shoplifting: Analyzing Spatial And Temporal Patterns, Elizabeth Petrenko

Dissertations and Theses

Shoplifting has contributed to significant losses in Oregon, reaching nearly $956 million in 2022. While overall property crime in Portland, Oregon, dropped between 2023 and 2024, reported shoplifting incidents increased by 50.0%. In Oregon, stealing property worth $100 or less is third-degree theft and a Class C misdemeanor. Second-degree theft involving stealing property between $100 and $1,000 is a Class A misdemeanor. Although often classified as petty or minor theft, shoplifting imposes strain on retailers, consumers, and communities, which raises questions about the spatial and temporal distribution of this crime. This study uses Portland Police Bureau (PPB) offense data to …

Community-Based Participatory Research In Developing Online Nutrition Tools: A Pathway To Relevance And Engagement, Laura Justice, Stacy Phillips

EFNEP

This article explains how Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) can strengthen the design of digital nutrition tools by ensuring they are culturally relevant, accessible, and grounded in community needs. By engaging participants as equal partners, CBPR enhances trust, usability, and long-term impact. The approach aligns with EFNEP’s mission to deliver inclusive, community-driven nutrition education and provides a framework for developing sustainable, adaptable tools that reflect the lived experiences of the families Extension serves.

Dialogue Between Mind And Algorithm: Deep Symbiosis Of Psychology And Artificial Intelligence, Xiaolan Fu, Zheng Yan

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

As artificial intelligence (AI) evolves from a supportive tool into a collaborative partner, the convergence of psychology and AI is gradually shifting from one-way application toward deep symbiosis. This study discusses the mutual empowerment resulting from their interaction, as well as the challenges they face and potential pathways to breakthroughs. On the one hand, psychology empowers AI by enhancing its human-like intelligence and social adaptability through cognitive modeling and ethical constraints; on the other hand, AI empowers psychology by leveraging multimodal data and algorithmic models to revolutionize psychological assessment and intervention methods. This deep symbiosis requires a clear-eyed acknowledgment of …

Who Gets To Be Taken Seriously? Three Atypical Scholars Navigate Doctoral Education At The Intersections Of Race, Neurodivergence, And Veteran Identity, Sr. Richard De La Garza

Dissertations

As a first-generation, neurodivergent, Mexican American/Chicano veteran, I entered the University of San Diego's doctoral program having had experiences that most institutional intake processes would label as risk factors. The Findings chapter of this dissertation begins by describing those experiences—not as a confession, but as the foundation for a systematic inquiry into how doctoral legitimacy is produced, withheld, and defended. The description of my life experiences is followed by a discussion of the doctoral journeys of two other study participants who also were atypical doctoral candidates.

The central argument being advanced is this: What higher education calls "fit," "rigor," and …

Functional And Structural Lesion Network Mapping: Insights Into Acquired Brain Injury And Insomnia, Kathleen Erekson Rugh

Theses and Dissertations

Insomnia disorder is the most reported sleep disorder and can negatively affect daily functioning. Acquired brain injuries can lead to insomnia disorder. Limited research has explored a causal link between brain networks and insomnia symptoms in this population. This study replicated a lesion network mapping methodology of an insomnia study (Helquist et al., 2024) and extended it to examine structural networks linked to insomnia symptoms in individuals with acquired brain injuries. Traced lesions (N =44) were used as seed regions to compare against normative functional and structural network data. For functional analyses, we used resting state fMRI scans from a …

Baseline Moderators Of A Transdiagnostic Adolescent Sleep And Circadian Health Intervention's Effectiveness At Improving Circadian Sleep Health: A Pilot Investigation, Jamon M. Jex

Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined whether baseline demographic and clinical characteristics moderate the effectiveness of the Transdiagnostic Sleep and Circadian (TSC) intervention in improving adolescent circadian sleep health. Using an integrative data analysis approach, data from three independent adolescent samples (N = 134; ages 10-18) were pooled to evaluate changes across multidimensional sleep outcomes defined by the RU-SATED model of sleep, including regularity, satisfaction, alertness, timing, efficiency, and duration. Linear mixed-effects models were used to assess pre-to-post intervention changes and test moderation by age, sex, family income, and clinical status. Results indicated significant improvements in sleep satisfaction following TSC, with greater …

Introducing The Qualitative Software Article Data Analysis Checklist (Qs-Adac), Sheryl L. Chatfield

The Qualitative Report

Authors and researchers have many alternatives to consider when seeking reporting guidance or assessing the thoroughness of reporting in published qualitative research articles.  However, widely used reporting guidance and checklist processes such as CASP, COREQ, SRQR, and the American Psychological Association JARS-Qual have few prompts related to researcher use of Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS) for data preparation, processing, or analysis. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the Qualitative Software Article Data Analysis Checklist (QS-ADAC), a tool developed to provide authors with reporting guidance and to provide students with a consistent process for examining details …

Governing Longevity: Biopolitics And Economic Restructuring In East Asian Aging Societies, Sherlyn She

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

How do rapidly aging societies govern longevity when demographic change threatens established welfare arrangements? This thesis examines aging governance in China, Japan, and South Korea to show how states simultaneously manage aging as a public-health problem and build it into an economic sector through what I term life capitalism.

Two interpretations of East Asian aging policy are widely circulated: that it is a peripheral case of Western neoliberalism, or a residue of Confucian familism. I reject both: the neoliberal reading captures marketization but misses the state as its active builder, since these states are expanding rather than retreating; the Confucian …

Strategic Silence: The Greek Left's Avoidance Of The 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe During The Refugee Crisis, 2015–2019, Harry Courts

College Honors Program

This thesis examines why the Greek political left, and specifically the SYRIZA government under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras during the time period from 2015 to 2019, made near-absent reference to the 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe when addressing the refugee crisis of those years. The Catastrophe, in which approximately 1.3 million Orthodox Greeks were displaced from Anatolia, is the foundational trauma of modern Greek nationhood and a living presence in Greek political culture. When hundreds of thousands of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi refugees arrived on Greek shores from 2015, the historical parallel was widely noted. That SYRIZA rarely drew it requires …

Economic Drivers Of International Migration To Türkiye: A Regional Comparison Study, Bekir Gündoğmuş, Musa Bayir, Ahmed Yusuf Sarihan

Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia

This study investigates the macroeconomic determinants of registered international migration to Türkiye by employing panel data regression techniques at the NUTS-2 regional level for the period 2016–2022. The results reveal that per capita income, employment, and the share of industry, services, and construction sectors in total production have a statistically significant and positive impact on migration inflows, while inflation exhibits a negative effect. However, agricultural production proportion and export performance do not appear to significantly influence regional migrant preferences. Causality tests further support the existence of both bidirectional and unidirectional relationships between economic indicators and migration. The findings underscore the …

Guilty Plea Appeals Across Two States: Who Appeals And Who Wins?, Jacqueline G. Lee, Kelsey S. Henderson, Mason Scott

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Though the vast majority of criminal convictions stem from guilty pleas, what occurs after the plea is relatively unknown. Data on appeals of guilty pleas was collected from two states to explore the prevalence and outcomes of guilty plea appeals, in addition to characteristics of those cases. One state produced approximately 5.5 times more plea appeal opinions per month than the other. Interestingly, one state's appeals largely centered around excessive sentencing claims (73.6%), while the other saw a range of grounds (e.g., ineffective assistance of counsel). Appealing defendants in one state almost always lost (only a 2% likelihood of success), …

Inherited By “Merit”: What Caste Carries Across The Indian American Diaspora, Aarushi V. Jaiswal

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

This project traces the rhetorical formation termed “meritocratic nationalism,” a political vocabulary that makes national belonging conditional on moralized merit, converting structural advantage into the language of individual character. Meritocratic nationalism is traced across three political figures whose rhetoric represents successive moments in a single ideological trajectory. Reading Narendra Modi’s 2014 and 2018 Independence Day addresses and his 2014 Madison Square Garden speech to the Indian American diaspora as the formation’s originating texts, this project argues that Modi’s recurring moral tetrad of conduct, values, traditions, and ability translated the structurally concentrated advantages of India’s upper-caste professional class into a universalist …

Memory Parties: Celebration As A Community Mental Health Intervention In Dementia Care, Alexis Ask

Expressive Therapies Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between memory, celebration, and collective experience, and proposes Memory Parties as a community mental health intervention for individuals with dementia, their families, and broader communities. Using a qualitative integrative literature review, this thesis synthesizes interdisciplinary research from dementia care, trauma studies, neurobiology, dance/movement therapy (DMT), cultural practices of ritual and celebration, and social psychology. The primary aim is to reconsider memory as an embodied, relational, and collective process rather than solely an individual cognitive function. Findings suggest that as cognitive and narrative memory change, individuals retain the capacity for emotional expression, relational engagement, and participation …

Exploring The Potential For Meaning-Making In Expressive Art Therapies Interventions In Treatment Of Complicated Grief For Gun Homicide Survivors: A Literature Review, Ash Landrein

Expressive Therapies Theses

Research shows that the violent nature of homicide and the extreme lethality of firearms in conflict lead to increased psychological impairment for survivors and communities affected. Black and Latinx communities are disproportionately affected by gun violence, yet are historically underresearched and underserved. Social constraints and systemic negligence complicate and stigmatize the bereavement process. This literature review examined culturally relevant grief practices, theories and components of meaning-making (MM) post-loss, and Expressive arts interventions for facilitating meaning, safety, and reconnection for survivors, through an intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, and age. Cumulative research shows that MM can help individuals experiencing complicated grief …

Incorporating Principles And Wisdom From Hospital Chaplaincy And Pastoral Ministry To Create A Ministry Model To Address Social Isolation And Loneliness In Black Churches, Albert A. Kemp

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

To address the growing and widespread epidemic of social isolation and loneliness, with special focus on Black churches, this dissertation developed a program with the following areas of application: 1) how healthcare trained chaplains can coordinate with churches to positively impact individuals identified as lonely and socially isolated with better social and physical health, 2) how principles of chaplaincy and pastoral care can mitigate and intervene competently when such people are identified, and 3) how the project’s model can be organized, taught, and incorporated into existing arenas of church ministry.

The purpose of the project was to create a ministry …

Reviving The Sacred: Reintegrating Traditional Tantric Philosophies Into Modern Yoga And Meditation Practices, Cameron J. Geary

Denison Journal of Religion

No abstract provided.

Sacralized Violence And The Feminized Body In The Book Of Revelation, Caroline Shane

Denison Journal of Religion

No abstract provided.

War Photography & The Limits Of Empathy, Andrea Shi

Student Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of photography, particularly war and poverty photography, has had massive implications for the level of vividness with which Americans are able to picture suffering beyond their doors. The mass atrocities that have occurred since the advent of photography – that is to say, the last 200 years – are so relentlessly circulated that they feel, sometimes, as an inevitable byproduct of human nature. It’s not surprising, then, that a lot of media theory and analysis reduce the dilemma of atrocity photographs to a psychological level. Do they numb us, or do they incite empathy? Are they a call …

Stalking Victimization Risk Factors Among College-Aged Men And Women: Does Relationship Type Matter?, Nicole Cebak

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research assessing stalking—or a pattern of repeated, unwanted behaviors directed at a specific individual that causes fear, distress, or concern for their safety—has identified several factors that can increase a person’s vulnerability to this form of victimization (e.g., demographic predictors, lifestyle factors, individual characteristics) (Fissel et al., 2023; Fox et al., 2016; Reyns et al., 2016; Reyns & Scherer, 2016). However, stalking can manifest within a wide range of relational contexts, suggesting that risk factors identified for stalking victimization more broadly may be insufficient across different victim-offender relationship types (e.g., stranger, intimate partner) (Reyns et al., 2016; Strauss et al., …