Digital Commons Network^™

Impressions Of An Urban Vision: Art Across The Park (1980 And 1982), Marie N. Catalano

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Art Across the Park (1980 and 1982), a program of sculpture and performance conceived of by artist David Hammons sited throughout overlooked regions of New York City’s public parks. Amidst debates about the proper use of public space and the role of public art in the early 1980s, Art Across the Park asserted a more culturally expansive model of being in social space, one rooted in strategies of performance as an antidote to lasting effects of social control.

"Those Common Everyday Things We All Know": Roger Brown's American Art, Jake Brodsky

Theses and Dissertations

Roger Brown (1941–1997) was an American artist associated with the Chicago Imagists. Borrowing elements from American visual culture to construct an idiosyncratic language of motifs, Brown’s paintings demand a mode of attention—of looking, searching, recognizing, identifying—that parallels the structures of feeling that constitute being in America.

L'Impuissance De La Représentation : Sur La Possibilité De La Représentation Du Terrorisme, Youtian Sun

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I attempt to explore the possibility of representing terrorism in literature by analyzing four literary works: Paris (1898), La Condition Humaine (1933), Nada (1973), and Khalil (2018). These four works depict four different stages of the development of terrorism from the late 19th century to the 21st century. I will use these literary works to analyze the relationship between terrorism and capitalist modernity.

Analysis Of Imaging Database And Identifying Novel Mri Diffusion Abnormalities In Alzheimer’S Disease, Analia Basilicata, Jennifer Padilla, Anjalee Rabbani, Anam Riaz

Publications and Research

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is presumably caused by two neuropathological protein markers: amyloid beta (Aβ) and neuro fibrillary tangles. Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) collects high quality patient data from standardized clinical trials using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), and Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) biomarkers to diagnose and evaluate the effectiveness of treatment for AD. MRI and PET screening for Alzheimer’s Disease aim to find structural, functional, and neurochemical abnormalities causing or caused by AD brain diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and Resting State functional MRI (RSfMRI) are emerging AD MRI tools. Tau PET is a promising method for …

Examining Transcriptional Regulators During Muscle Development In Drosophila Melanogaster, Chaamy Yapa

Student Theses and Dissertations

In Drosophila melanogaster embryos, a distinct approach to study the transcriptional regulation is to examine the larval somatic muscle development. Transcription factors are essential regulatory proteins that help to control gene expression and respond to signaling pathways and various cues. Today, there are at least twenty transcription factors that have been discovered to contribute to the development of the 30 distinct larval somatic muscles in each abdominal hemisegment of Drosophila melanogaster. Several studies have already been conducted on muscle regulatory transcription factors including midline and apterous. These transcription factors were shown to control the development of muscles through mutant …

Validating A New In Vivo Model To Study Als, Izabela J. Cimachowska

Student Theses and Dissertations

Buildup of oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction are well known characteristics of both sporadic and hereditary amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). While both forms of the disease seem to arise from common cellular dysfunction, the genetic disease is studied to a much greater extent. Engineering novel animal models of the sporadic form of the disease is crucial for development of druggable targets to treat ALS and understand the underlying mechanisms. Interestingly, accumulation of oxidative stress by exacerbated emission of reactive oxygen species (ROS) from presynaptic mitochondria is a hallmark of both hereditary and sporadic ALS. Previous work by our laboratory showed …

Dynamic Risk Trajectories, Community Context, And Juvenile Recidivism, Kevin T. Wolff, Michael T. Baglivio, Jonathan Intravia

Publications and Research

Purpose

While the implementation of risk assessment has expanded, the extent to which there are different trajectories of risk/protective factors among adjudicated youth during supervision in the community remains unanswered. The goal of the current study is to identify the distinct trajectories in dynamic risk and protective factors among youth on probation and assess whether different patterns in risk over time are associated with continued offending.

Method

Group-based trajectory modeling is used to identify distinct trajectories across multiple domains of risk/need. The individual- and neighborhood-level factors associated with these trajectories are then explored, prior to examining their relationship to continued …

The Influence Of Nature On Well-Being During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Views From New England Island Residents, Nicole Kras

Publications and Research

Researchers are beginning to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on island populations, but little is known about the experiences of the residents of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard in the Northeast region of the United States. In this study, islanders (N=41) provide insight into how spending time in nature influenced their well-being, especially their mental well-being, during this unprecedented time. For the majority of participants, the influence of nature on their well-being increased during the pandemic. Additionally, participants shared benefits of island living such as isolation from the mainland, as well as challenges such as food and supply shortages. …

Giving Voice To The Body: Slam Poetry In The Poet X, Stefanny Leung Yu

Student Theses

When the world silences her, can slam poetry become her voice? Elizabeth Acevedo, an author and poet, uses her beautiful piece of slam poetry to explore how language can empower marginalized voices, speaking on behalf of those who are usually silenced. The Poet X is a verse novel that narrates the powerful story of a young Afro-Latina girl, Xiomara Batista, who navigates the intersecting pressures of school bullies, family issues, religious conservatism, patriarchal rules, and racialized body politics in her Harlem community. This research engages with Acevedo’s work to focus on how slam poetry serves as a powerful outlet and …

What Before Means: Teaching About The Communicative Contribution Of The English Pluperfect, Max Miller

Publications and Research

This paper presents a text-based analysis of the communicative functions of the simple past and pluperfect tenses of English, and offers a pedagogical approach to assist learners in acquiring them. Following a functional, usage-based linguistics perspective, the analysis holds that the simple past expresses Time PAST, while the pluperfect expresses Time PAST, BEFORE. Thus only the latter tense signals a speaker's subjective creation of a linkage in time. The understanding of these meanings can enhance an English language teacher's effectiveness in the classroom (as in selecting texts and activities) and a language user's effectiveness in communication. A classroom-based pedagogical application …

Afterlives Of The Willowbrook, Hosu Kim

Open Educational Resources

By drawing upon my teaching experience at CUNY and research in critical disability studies, I frame willowbrook mile as a laboratory which connects between historic violence and present dilemmas of public higher education and explore/imagine various modalities of teaching and learning as a site of repair and a decolonizing public higher education.

Wild Women Of Anatolia: The Critical Construct Validity Of The Liberation Of Women In Turkey, Sedef Ozoguz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Feminist, sexuality and social psychology researchers studying women’s liberation in Turkey have solely focused on freedoms denied, outlining freedoms from gendered political, institutional and intimate constraints such as domestic violence, without much attention to freedoms desired, such as freedom to dream. Following Fromm’s (1941) conceptualization of freedom as freedom from restrictions placed on one and freedom to do what one wants to do authentically, my work engages in the critical construct validity (Fine & Torre, 2019) of the liberation of Turkish women, troubling, questioning and critiquing the assumptions typically made about the construct and offering an alternative way of studying …

Explicit Instruction In A Second Grade Picturebook Author Study, Ted Kesler

Publications and Research

sing the Learning by Design multiliteracies framework, writing workshop was transformed into composing workshop. The researcher worked with a team of four second grade teachers in an urban public elementary school to redesign their Kevin Henkes author study to equally value art and design, guiding their students in creating their own narrative picturebooks. The researcher addresses the following two research questions: 1. What explicit instructional practices did the teachers enact? 2. What influence did these explicit instructional practices have on the second graders’ composing work? The researcher applied cross-case analysis, first to create an inventory of explicit instructional practices, and …

Course Project Overview Biology 1400, General Biology Ii, Kristin Polizzotto

Open Educational Resources

This open pedagogy assignment is a semester-long project for an introductory general biology course for biology majors. Working in pairs or small groups, students will make a 3 to 5 minute video explaining concepts from the course learning objectives. Students will apply a creative commons license and publish their videos on CUNY Academic Works (or another appropriate platform), where they will be available to future introductory biology students as learning resources.

Learning outcomes:

At the end of this project, students will be able to do the following:

• Effectively teach a concept from the course to a general audience
• Identify and …

Introduction To Human Biology, Sharon S. Ellerton, Christopher Roblodowski

Open Educational Resources

This OER is intended as a textbook for a one semester introductory course in Human Anatomy and Physiology for non-science majors. It covers the major topics typically covered in A&P, but in a simplified, easier to understand manner. This textbook aims to educate students interested in lower-level health careers and non-science majors without the intimidating detail found in current textbooks. Text and images were created to be more accessible for these student populations.

Committee On Academic Standing Minutes March 22, 2023, Bronx Community College Committee On Academic Standing

BCC Governance Archives

No abstract provided.

To Ask Or Not To Ask? Dynamic Systems Perspective On Help Seeking In An Introductory Statistics Classroom, Bradley W. Bergey

Publications and Research

Student-generated questions are an important mechanism for learning and self-regulation, yet their scarcity in classroom discourse points to a need to understand how students decide to ask or withhold their questions. This study examined how 12 graduate students in an introductory statistics course made decisions about asking questions during whole group instruction. Help seeking decisions were framed as arising from a dynamic system of a student’s situated role identity as a class participant. Qualitative analysis of post-class interviews illustrated the highly contextual, dynamic nature of students’ decisions to ask or withhold questions. Analyses revealed an array of microdecisions that involved …

Committee On Academic Standing Minutes March 8, 2023, Bronx Community College Committee On Academic Standing

BCC Governance Archives

Minutes for the meeting of the Committee on Academic Standing on March 8, 2023.

Salty: A Diffractive Inquiry Of Visceral Knowing And Embodied Aesthetics, Mei Ling Chua

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes a diffractive, onto-epistemological approach to everyday practices with salt in order to articulate an expanded understanding of meaning making and knowledge production. This research reckons with and challenges dominant modes of knowing that engage a Cartesian perspective to situate knowing as the exclusive domain of the mind in both form and topic of inquiry. This research acts simultaneously as both a direct practice of and metacognition about knowledge production by examining 1. the embodied (including sensory and emotional aspects) and 2. the relational (including interpersonal and socio-cultural) dimensions of experience as visceral knowing. This articulation of …

The Devil Is In The Details: Witchcraft Materiality And Systems Of Belief In Early Modern France, Ryan Evelyn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My approach to the early modern French witch figure, as defined by their materiality, considers the representation of things, objects, and substances in texts. It was inspired by the surge in material culture studies, whose genesis in the 1980s and 1990s spurred theoretical approaches to (re)considering human interactions with objects, the way in which materials can be manipulated to serve various ends, and which objects were deemed culturally significant. I employ this approach to a (re)assessment of the witch figure as illustrated in demonologies, medical texts, and imaginative literature as early as the 14^th century spanning into the early …

Analyzing Relationships With Machine Learning, Oscar Ko

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Procedurally, this project aims to take a dataset, analyze it, and offer insights to the audience in an easy-to-digest format. Conceptually, this project will seek to explore questions like: “Do couples that meet through online dating or dating apps have higher or lower quality relationships?”, “Can any features in this dataset help predict how a subject would rate their relationship quality?”, and “What other insights can I derive from using machine learning for exploratory analysis?” The intended audience for this project is anyone interested in romantic relationships or machine learning.

The dataset is from a Stanford University survey, “How Couples …

Dendritic Spine Density And Morphology In The Dorsolateral Striatum Following A High Fat Diet, Tikva Nabatian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Obesity rates have been dramatically rising in recent years and in 2017-2018 more than 42% of adults in the United States were obese. Obesity is associated with numerous health problems, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, insulin resistance, and type II diabetes. The prevalence of highly palatable and calorically dense foods high in fats and sugars is a significant factor in the increase in obesity rates. Many suggest that palatable food affects the brain in ways similar to drugs of abuse, reinforcing the consumption of highly palatable foods in the same way drugs reinforce drug use. While numerous weight loss programs and …

A Sentiment Analysis Of "Filipinx" On Twitter Using A Multinomial Naïve Bayes Classification Model, Clarisse Taboy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On social media, the use of “Filipinx” as a gender neutral, inclusive term for “Filipino” tends to generate high user engagement, at times without regard for the original context in which the word appears. This project applies computational methods to collect a large dataset in English/Filipino from Twitter containing “Filipinx”, and to train a Naïve Bayes model to classify tweets into three sentiments: positive, neutral, and negative. My methodology takes inspiration from that of four related studies that similarly conducted sentiment analysis on English/Filipino tweets involving various topics, and whose resulting accuracy scores were compared side-by-side. Conducting sentiment analysis on …

Fostering Expertise, Confidence, And Passion In Writing Education: How A Common Sense, Nonbinary Education Policy May Serve To Enrich Teachers’ Writing Lives, Shrink The Divide Between Literacy Educators, And Finally Improve Literacy Among New York City Students, Rebecca I. Wallace-Segall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I examine the ongoing youth literacy crisis in New York City and, along with it, two long-standing, opposing education policies—progressive and traditional—that have sought to address it. I argue that resisting dogmatic adherence to one or the other of these approaches, coupled with teacher-centered professional development opportunities that emphasize educators’ reconnection to the personal experience of writing, will improve classroom writing education goals. Over the course of a decade and a half, I co-designed a new educational framework that combines and elaborates upon the strengths of both approaches; over the past year, I co-designed a teacher-centered professional development opportunity for …

Bearer Negotiable Instruments: Addressing A Financial Intelligence Gap And Identifying Criminogenic Weaknesses, Hollis B. Kegg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bearer Negotiable Instruments (BNI) are a long-standing category of financial instruments used to transfer large amounts of money in ways that may not be subject to regulation, reporting, tracking, review, or oversight. There is limited information available on BNIs, and no evidence that any studies have been undertaken on BNIs alone, much less reported. Increasingly, BNIs are being used for illegal purposes including money laundering. This study gathers information about their characteristics, nature, purpose, legal status, and numbers. It also focuses on the crime risks associated with BNIs, the crime opportunities they facilitate, and the criminal weaknesses in the financial …

Quantifying Psychostimulant-Induced Sensitization Effects On Dopamine And Acetylcholine Release Across Different Timescales, Georg Lange

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drug-induced behavioral sensitization describes the phenomenon that behavioral response to a drug of abuse is getting stronger if the same psychostimulant is delivered multiple times which is much more pronounced if done in the same environmental context. A proposed neural basis is the formation of an association between contextual cues and the rewarding drug which is mediated by dopamine. Dopamine operates at different timescales and to fully understand dopamine sensitization, it is necessary to investigate dopamine release at slow (tens of minutes) but also faster (sub-second) timescales. But creating a holistic view has been difficult due to a lack of …

Kingdoms Becoming: Dialectic Of Black Romanticism, Rasheed M. Hinds

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Kingdoms Becoming emphasizes the profound impact that biblical prophecy, the slave trade, and the American Revolution had on Romanticism, Black nationalism, and horizontal transnationalism. Whereas current scholarship identifies the French Revolution as the seismic shift that inspired British Romanticism and caused a resurgence in prophetic enthusiasm, the American Revolution represents the advent of Black Romanticism and inchoate Black nationalism; this cataclysmic event introduced Afro-British identity, Black Romantic prophecy, and Black nationalist sentiment to the English nation. While many scholars have underscored the ways in which the abolitionist movement informed both British and Black Romanticism and sparked a transnational human-rights movement, …

Ornamentalism: Costuming And The Portrayal Of The Chinese Woman In Film, 20th-21st Century, Andrea Yepez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis aims to analyze the concept of “Ornamentalism,” a term created by Anne Anlin Cheng. In Ornamentalism (2019), Cheng proposes the term—a combination of Orientalism and ornament—as a new way to study Asiatic femininity. Cheng applies the term to a case study of the career of Anna May Wong, the first Asian-American actress to feature in Hollywood films. Throughout her career, which began in the 1920s, Anna May Wong held the status of it-girl and muse to designers such as John Galliano. However, Wong was also subjected to playing stereotypical Asian roles in films and was consistently the victim …

Social Identity, Scientific Practice, And The Production Of Social Knowledge: An Ethnographic Investigation Of American Social Psychology Laboratories, Donald V. Brown Jr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social identity has the ability to permeate a multitude of domains in everyday life. Therefore, the science of social psychology—influential due to its impact in education, social and public policy, and the law—rightfully foregrounds the presence of social identity categories in the theorizing and empirical work of the discipline. Many researchers consider social identities such as race and gender to be socially constructed categories. This allows researchers to understand these identities in light of their history, complexity, and relationships to each other. However, the practical application and use of social identities as socially constructed “objects of study” is uncommon in …

A Race-Police Regime: Nypd Technology And Urban Governance In New York City, Elliott Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation draws on three years of ethnographic and archival research to explore the relationship between technology, policing and race at the NYPD. In focusing on the ways problems are constructed and police power enacted, I explore the more-than-human entanglements in the production of race and the governance of cities under racial capitalism. My overarching claim is that urban governance works through contentious techno-political arrangements I call race-police regimes, which sanction and elicit race by enacting forms of exclusion and belonging. Racial capitalism in New York City, I argue, is governed through a technocratic mode of policing which leverages …