Digital Commons Network^™

Analyzing Environmental Education In Northern Mississippi And Its Impact On Student Outcomes, Vishnu S. Gadepalli

Honors Theses

This thesis examines environmental education in public high schools in northern Mississippi, investigating how educators describe its presence, delivery, and institutional support in communities disproportionately burdened by environmental harm. Seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with high school teachers across four northern Mississippi schools, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed through iterative thematic coding under Institutional Review Board approval. Five themes emerged: opportunistic curricular integration, time and standards as overriding structural constraints, passive institutional support, student receptivity tempered by limited awareness, and significant variation across school contexts with one magnet school as a clear outlier. The study concludes that environmental education in these …

From Source And Summit To Parish Practice: A Qualitative Analysis Of Eucharist And Social Outreach, Erik Sorensen S.J.

Journal of Global Catholicism

A small-scale qualitative study in a Catholic parish situated in Ottawa, Canada,

offers insights into the complex relationship between that community’s worship

and its commitment to social justice. This article brings the lived theology of

this community into dialogue with the academic and magisterial perspectives

on the Eucharist as the source and summit of Christian life. The dialogue is

framed by the Theological Action Research Network’s four voices of theology:

operant, espoused, formal, and normative. This framework helps to center the

marginalized theology of the faithful in the pews. In this case, the parish of-

fered a dynamic theology of …

“Ite Missa Est”: How Can The Altar Alter Attitudes And Actions?, Ebenezer Akesseh

Journal of Global Catholicism

This paper brings into focus the relationship between personal agency and so-

cial structure, demonstrating that what we celebrate on the altar forms within

us the proper dispositions that can help prevent the occurrence of corruption.

The first part examines corruption from a socio-cultural perspective and ex-

plains the incidence and effects of corruption. The second part discusses the

relationship between worship and the formation of actions and attitudes. It

highlights the need to embody the social implications of our celebrations. Using

responses from interviewees, the third part illustrates that the celebration of the

Eucharist shapes the commitments and conduct …

The Lived Liturgical Experience Of Non-Catholic Participants In The Roman Catholic Mass: Tactical Ecumenism In Overlapping Ritual Systems, Sarah Johnson

Journal of Global Catholicism

In religiously diverse social contexts, liturgical practices anchored in one reli-

gious tradition often gather diverse communities. In such contexts, it is wise to

assume that people who are not Catholic may be present at any Roman Cath-

olic Mass. This article explores the lived liturgical experience of non-Catholic

Christians who participate routinely in the Roman Catholic Mass through a

mixed-methods study of a religiously diverse treble vocal ensemble that sings

weekly at Mass on a Catholic university campus. It describes how Catholic and

non-Catholic Christian singers interpret practices surrounding the eucharistic

meal in contrasting ways: non-Catholic Christians experience the …

Negotiating Plurality: Korean Catholic Funerals As Lived Religion, Jieun Han

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines Korean Catholic funeral rites through the lenses of ritual

guidebooks and lived religion, arguing that Catholic funerary practice in Korea

has emerged through sustained engagement with Confucian and Buddhist tradi-

tions as well as modern nationalism. Focusing on Catholic manuals such as the

Sangjang yesik [Rites for Mourning and Funerals] and related texts, it traces how

officially sanctioned liturgical forms coexist with, accommodate, and reinterpret

indigenous ritual logics surrounding mourning, burial, ancestor veneration, and

care for the dead. Rather than viewing Korean Catholic funerals as a simple

localization of Roman rites, the article conceptualizes them as a …

Editor's Introduction, Brent H. Otto S.J.

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Review Of Archives And Emotions: International Dialogues Across Past, Present, And Future, Caelin Ross

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This review analyzes Archives and Emotions: International Dialogues Across Past, Present, and Future, edited by Ilaria Scaglia and Valeria Vanesio, which argues that emotions are constitutive forces in archival practice rather than distortions of objective work. This volume explores international case studies from the 1800s to the present, bridging the gap between archival science and historical scholarship. It examines how emotions influence preservation, access, and the production of knowledge. The editors use various theoretical frameworks to show that affect plays a contextual role across different types of archives and institutional settings. Key contributions include analyses of international standardization, archivists' …

Religious Night Tourism During Ramadan In Mashhad, Iran: Lived Experiences Of Pilgrims, Neda Zarandian, Razieh Rabani, Daniel H. Olsen

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Mashhad, located in northeastern Iran, is one of the most significant pilgrimage destinations in the Islamic world, attracting millions of visitors annually to the Imam Reza Shrine (The eighth Imam of Shia Muslims). During Ramadan, the city transforms into a vibrant spiritual and social space where nocturnal religious practices and social gatherings shape distinctive emotional and temporal experiences for both pilgrims and tourists. Understanding these lived nighttime experiences is essential for developing culturally sensitive and spiritually meaningful tourism approaches. Despite the growing attention to religious tourism, the temporal, emotional, and sensory dimensions of night tourism in pilgrimage contexts remain unexplored. …

Lesson Learned: Developing A Replica Of The Kaaba In Central Lombok As An Educational Religious Tourism Destination - A Public Sector Role Approach, M. Setyo Nugroho, Muhammad Muhajir Aminy

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This study examines the role of village administration in developing the Kaaba replica as a religious education site in Central Lombok. It introduces a unique tourism product that provides travellers with an experience reminiscent of the Hajj in Mecca. The research employs a qualitative approach with exploratory analysis, and data were collected through observation, interviews, and documentation. Observations focused on the replica’s condition, supporting attractions, facilities, infrastructure, tour packages, and tourist activities. Interviews were conducted with village officials, replica management, and community members. Documentation included photographs, audio, video, records, scientific publications, and books related to the replica. The findings indicate …

Book Review: The History And Politics Of Star Wars: Death Stars And Democracy, Petra Hendrickson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Book Review: The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy

Unsex Me Here: Gendered Psychology In Shakespeare's Major Tragedies And Comedy, Md. Abu Bakkar

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

This study examines how gender shapes psychological experience across five of Shakespeare’s major plays: Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Twelfth Night. Existing scholarship treats Shakespeare’s tragic women, tragic men, and comic heroines as separate problems; this article asks whether one framework connects them. Its starting point is the reversal in psychological positions between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth: he resists killing on moral grounds and then grows recklessly violent, while she plans the murder with cold resolve and is later overwhelmed by guilt. The study asks whether this pattern recurs more broadly, and why. Drawing …

Sectoral Structuring And Socio-Economic Context: The Resilience Capacity Of Tourism Businesses In Corsica And The Balearic Islands - A Comparative Analysis, Léa Giudicelli

International Journal of Islands Research

The tourism sector remains intrinsically vulnerable to crises of various kinds, including natural disasters, terrorist attacks, volcanic activity, and pandemics. The unprecedented disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which virtually paralysed global tourism for many months, have led to a critical reassessment of tourism specialisation and revitalised debates about the sector’s potential for sustainable transformation (Girard & Schéou, 2020). In this reflective context, the present study aims to analyse the adaptive capacity of tourism enterprises facing structural changes affecting the sector in recent years. Particular attention is paid to the consequences of growing collective awareness around climate change, as well …

From Welfare To Labour Rights: Shifting Terrains Of Collective Action Among India’S Platform Workers, Gayatri Nair, Eesha Kunduri

National Law School Journal

Digital labour platforms worldwide have deepened the shift towards temporary, piecemeal, casual, and non-standard work arrangements. With significant implications for wages, employment relationships, and social security, the rise of platform work has (re)shaped the experiences of work in urban India in profound ways. Our ethnographic engagements in Delhi and Hyderabad are the basis to highlight three labour issues: of wages, safety, and discrimination, which shape the everyday experience of platform workers and which have consequently been raised by unions and through workers’ collective action. These issues, we argue, demonstrate the need for legislative interventions that regulate labour conditions in platform …

From Kitchen To Canon: Women And Culinary Recognition Executive Summary, Eulanda A. Sanders, Andra Harris

ICHRIE Research Reports

Despite women comprising a majority of the U.S. restaurant workforce, they remain significantly underrepresented in culinary leadership and elite recognition. Using an exploratory, descriptive design that draws on secondary data from the ACS, NRA, U.S. Census Bureau, and the James Beard Foundation, this study maps gender disparities across the culinary career pipeline. Women represent approximately 54% of the restaurant workforce but only 24.8% of chefs and head cooks, with a substantial gender wage gap persisting across the occupation (NRA, 2026; U.S. Census Bureau, 2024). Of 402 James Beard Award winners analyzed, 71.6% were male and 28.1% female. Disparities intensify at …

4-H Program Staff Perceptions Of Including Youth With Disabilities, Brittney Muschetto, Amy Leman

Journal of Youth Development

This study’s focus is to examine 4-H youth development county program staff’s perceptions of the inclusion of youth with disabilities in the Illinois 4-H program. The majority of program staff identified positive perceptions about including youth with disabilities in 4-H. However, they also noted that there was a need for more staff training to adequately include youth with disabilities in 4-H programming. As more youth are being diagnosed with disabilities, 4-H must continue to improve its knowledge and skills to make 4-H inclusive to all youth.

Public Cleanliness Satisfaction Survey 2025, Paulin Straughan, Mathews Mathew

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Singapore Management University undertook the seventh wave of the Public Cleanliness Satisfaction Survey (PCSS), with 2,007 Singapore residents participating in the survey conducted from December 2025 to April 2026.

The findings from the 2025 wave of the PCSS continued to reflect generally high levels of satisfaction with public cleanliness in Singapore. Based on the Public Cleanliness Satisfaction Index, 91% of respondents reported being satisfied with the cleanliness of public spaces they had recently visited. While this represents a slight shift from 94% in 2023, overall satisfaction levels across all public space domains remained high. Continued community responsibility and action …

Allyship And Affect: Qualitative Investigations Into Social Transformation, Michael Lucinda Jane Greer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Allies have faced several critiques in feminist philosophy. Some have argued that they lack the requisite political interests to be motivated to dismantle the social structures from which they stand to benefit. Others have argued that the epistemic limitations resulting from their social privilege are insurmountable. Yet others have argued that allyship is too individualistic a concept, preferring a more collectivist concept like solidarity. However, there remain privileged individuals who understand themselves as complicit in perpetuating oppressive forms of life, and who wish to transform themselves and work in coalition across difference to dismantle structural oppression. How ought these individuals …

Religion And Economics: The Economic Views Of Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia Ii Of Georgia, Giuli Giguashvili

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The paper examines the impact of religion on a country’s economic development, analyzing how religious values and institutions influence economic behavior. The research employs a qualitative, comparative, and historical approach based on the systematic analysis of primary and secondary sources. Religion can promote economic growth by strengthening work ethics, education, and social order. Still, it may also hinder development through inefficient resource allocation and regulatory influence. In the context of the 1700th anniversary of Christianity in Georgia, the study highlights the relationship between Orthodox teaching and economic thought. Drawing on the epistles and sermons of the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, …

The Orthodox Church Of Georgia In A Shifting Political Landscape: Long Traditions, The Holy Patriarchate And Geopolitics Between The European Union And Russia, Elina Mirjam Siekkinen

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This paper examines the geopolitical and societal effects of the 2026 patriarchal succession within the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC), by analyzing how the recent election of Catholicos-Patriarch Shio III on May 11, 2026, impacts Georgia’s European Union integration efforts. The GOC is seen as the foundation of Georgian national identity and state legitimacy, also deeply rooted in the legacy of the late Patriarch Ilia II. The enthronement of the new Patriarch Shio III may reinforce the anti-Western narratives deployed by the ruling Georgian Dream party, which has actively delayed Georgia’s EU accession through illiberal policies such as the "Foreign Agents …

When Everything Falls Apart: On Core Values, Religion, And What Holds Societies Together, András Máté-Tóth

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Right now my region, like much of the world, is living through upheavals that reach both nature and politics at their foundations. When I look around and take the political crises seriously — the mass protests in Serbia, the long erosion of checks and balances in Hungary, the bitter fight over the courts and the rule of law in Poland — one question keeps surfacing: are we witnessing genuinely fundamental change, or only a reshuffling on the surface of power? That question is exactly what makes the problem of core values so urgent, and so current.

Nihilistic Violence Aesthetics In Public Online Communication, Heath Nicholas Landress

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Public online communication has increasingly included violence-related content that is meme-based, ironic, visually stylized, multimodal, and only partially ideological. This comprehensive literature review synthesized research on online extremism, extremist memes, toxic multimodal content, dehumanizing digital communication, nihilistic violent extremism, warning behaviors, platform affordances, and youth-facing online environments. The purpose was to clarify what the literature had established; identify where the scholarship remained fragmented; and map research domains relevant to social, behavioral, public safety, and human services scholarship. The review used a structured, comprehensive literature review strategy supported by integrative synthesis procedures. The final corpus contained 34 scholarly sources, including 32 …

With Students, As A Student: Using Reflexive Autoethnography To Make Sense Of Navigating Student–Researcher Liminality In A Ph.D., Melody Bishop

The Qualitative Report

Postgraduate researchers (PGRs) are increasingly encouraged to practice reflexivity. But there is a lack of PGR-authored literature about what it means to negotiate multiple identities, particularly for student–researchers doing research with students. This paper explores challenges experienced during a longitudinal Ph.D. project involving undergraduate students with long-term health conditions. I present outcomes of a reflexive autoethnographic analysis of a diary kept making sense of research challenges, including holding dual positions as a student–researcher at the same institution. Drawing on the notion of liminality, I argue that the boundaries between my student–researcher identities, and between myself and participants, have been consistently …

A Post-Positivist Perspective On The Varieties Of Qualitative Research: The Foris Framework, Marius Bytautas

The Qualitative Report

With the aim of bringing clarity to the realm of qualitative research—and offering a transition from tradition to methodological rationale—I employ Millian and Popperian inductive analysis methods to build a post-positivist account regarding the diversity of qualitative research varieties. I am responding to the problem that common labels in qualitative research often obscure the epistemic reasoning through which a study approaches its object. A brief set of working definitions is introduced to support the framework, but the main contribution is the conceptualization of research approach in five dimensions: focus, orientation, relation to the object, researcher intrusiveness, and scale (FORIS). By …

From Structure To Experiences: How Facility Capacity And Staffing Shape The Adoption And Impact Of Lgbt-Affirming Policies In Long-Term Care, Andrew Alberth

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Long-term care (LTC) settings – including nursing homes (NHs) and assisted living facilities (ALFs) – provide necessary care for individuals with extreme health and functioning limitations. Sexual and gender minority (LGBT) older adults report challenges receiving effective, person-centered care LTC. Some LGBT older adults may hide their sexual orientation and gender identity when entering LTC settings or delay seeking needed LTC fearing discrimination from staff and other residents. Furthermore, staff in LTC settings indicate little awareness of LGBT-residents and possess inadequate LGBT-cultural competency necessary for providing person-centered care. Therefore, LGBT-residents LTC experiences remain underexplored in the broader research. Adopting LGBT-affirming …

Our Claims Matter: Latin American Migrants’ Nonviolent And Everyday Resistance Across Transnational Spaces, Pryanka Penafiel-Cevallos

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how Latin American migrants engage in nonviolent resistance across transnational spaces in Ecuador, challenging dominant narratives that portray migrants primarily as passive actors or humanitarian subjects. Focusing mainly on Venezuelan, Colombian, and returned Ecuadorian migrants, the study places migrants’ political agency at the center of analysis. It asks how migrants resist, for what purposes, and under which conditions they mobilize nonviolent and everyday resistance practices to claim rights, dignity, and human security in a host country marked by both legal innovation and growing exclusion.

Drawing on civil resistance theory, everyday resistance approaches, and migration scholarship, the research …

The Effect Of State Policy On Individuals With Mental Illness In Nursing Homes: A Multilevel Analysis, Adrita Barooah

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE EFFECT OF STATE POLICY ON INDIVIDUALS WITH MENTAL ILLNESS IN NURSING HOMES: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS

August 2026

Adrita Barooah, B.Sc., University of Delhi, India

M.S., University of Massachusetts Boston

Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Boston

Directed by Professor Pamela Nadash

The proportion of individuals living with a mental illness in U.S. nursing homes has grown substantially over the past few decades (Fashaw et al., 2020), raising serious concerns about care quality, resource adequacy, and costs to both nursing homes and government payers. The lack of adequate resources and knowledge has resulted in sub-par mental health care (O'Connor et al., …

Parameters Autumn 2026, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Artificial Intelligence And Social Equities: Navigating The Intersectionalities In A Digital Age (Editorial), Daisuke Akiba, Julie Albright

Publications and Research

This editorial article introduces and synthesizes the Special Issue, “Artificial intelligence and social equities: navigating the intersectionalities in a digital age,” which examines how AI systems intersect with race, ethnicity, and interconnected identity dimensions across global contexts. The eight contributions span healthcare, digital media, higher education, organizational communication, and speculative futures, addressing anti-racist psychiatric algorithms, AI-generated visual disinformation, epistemic injustice between the Global North and South, algorithmically mediated rural–urban divides, culturally untranslated technology transfer, accessibility auditing across the AI lifecycle, and the tension between mechanical objectivity and empathic understanding. Read together, they show that AI is neither inherently …

Psychosis Among Justice-Involved Youth, Muhubo Y. Alinur

Master of Arts in Human Services

Abstract

Justice-involved youth face considerable mental health challenges, yet psychotic symptoms are frequently overlooked or misclassified as behavioral problems. This capstone critically reviews peer-reviewed literature on the prevalence, risk factors, assessment strategies, clinical needs, and systemic responses related to psychosis in justice-involved adolescents. Literature was sourced from Concordia University, St. Paul Library, Google Scholar, and PubMed. Research indicates that these youth often experience complex, overlapping issues such as trauma, substance use, mood disorders, neurodevelopmental difficulties, and barriers to accessing appropriate mental health care. Unaddressed, these co-occurring needs can result in punitive or unsuitable responses from justice and related systems when …

When Childcare Becomes A Crime Space In Contemporary Indonesia, Isyana Kurniasari Konoras, Dr. Dra. Vinita Susanti, M.Si

Jurnal Kriminologi Indonesia

Abstract. The increasing incidence of violence against children in daycare institutions reflects a structural crisis in contemporary child protection systems. This study examines the violence case at Little Aresha Daycare in Yogyakarta to identify the criminogenic factors underlying abuse in institutional childcare settings. The research applies a normative-empirical qualitative method through media-based case studies, legal analysis, and criminological interpretation. The findings demonstrate that violence emerged from the convergence of three major factors: structural strain experienced by caregivers, weak capable guardianship within daycare institutions, and the normalization of abusive disciplinary practices. Robert K. Merton’s Strain Theory explains how economic and occupational …