Digital Commons Network^™

Phil 110: Critical Thinking, Cuny School Of Professional Studies

Open Educational Resources

Focuses on the techniques of rational inference and analytical judgment. These include the study of informal logic (arguing cogently and recognizing common informal fallacies), formal patterns of reasoning (syllogistic and propositional logic), and some distinctive analytical methods used in scientific and professional disciplines. Provides students with the competencies that are requisite to successful career growth and life-long learning.

Geog 301: International Migration, Cuny School Of Professional Studies

Open Educational Resources

An inquiry into current and historical immigration trends with a geographic focus on the United States, including research and evaluation of legal frameworks and theories of why people migrate. Students who complete this course will have the ability to critically analyze and contribute to current conversations about immigration and will acquire marketable skills related to empirical data analysis and visualization.

Las 101: Latin American And Caribbean Cultures, Cuny School Of Professional Studies

Open Educational Resources

Introduces texts and media from Latin American and Caribbean cultures, including film, music, and performance. Analyzes the distinguishing features of Latin American and Caribbean Cultures through the study of cultural artifacts and issues related to history, politics, customs, and art. Requires research on selected topics.

Mapping Staten Island: A Field Study Guide, Nerve Macaspac

Open Educational Resources

This is a guide for the field study and urban lab as partial requirements for GEG 260 Urban Geography at CUNY College of Staten Island. The field study introduces students to spatial ethnography and offers an opportunity to observe, experience and examine a range of spatial urban phenomena that they have learned in the classroom within actually-existing urban environments. Designed as a collaborative activity, students will work in teams in exploring and examining the built environment on-site and then produce multimedia deliverables to capture their reflections throughout the field study using creative and experimental methods. The collaborative and experimental design …

Syllabus: Equity, Elitism, And Public Higher Education, Katina Rogers, Matt Brim

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus for a mixed MA/PhD level course, "Equity, Elitism, and Public Higher Education," taught in Spring 2021 at the Graduate Center by Matt Brim and Katina Rogers.

Higher education can be a powerful engine of equity and social mobility. Yet many of the structures of colleges and universities—including admissions offices, faculty hiring committees, disciplinary formations, institutional rankings, and even classroom pedagogies and practices of collegiality—rely on tacit values of meritocracy and an economy of prestige. For public universities like CUNY this tension can be especially problematic, as structurally-embedded inequities undermine the institution’s democratizing mission and values. It …

Ant-37 Open Assignments, Jill L. Siegel

Open Educational Resources

The following activities use open educational practices to engage students in active and shared learning. The first section discusses a model for creating a more open syllabus, the second section is an assignment where students create a collaborative bulletin board, and the third section is an activity where students first create presentations that are added to an online “video text.” All of these activities are buildable and can be shared with new classes over time, building a larger repository of class materials that are based on students' active participation and authoritative knowledge. While these are intended for an Introductory class …

Is “Just Googling It” Good Enough For First-Year Students?, Maureen Richards

Publications and Research

This study analyzes citations by first-year students to determine what content they were citing and whether it was available through the open web or the library. Examining the role of these two places as content providers for academic work fills a gap in the literature. Most of the cited works were available through the library and the open web. As the line between content providers continues to blur, these results can help academic libraries prioritize what to teach students about information literacy, where to focus collection development efforts and how to promote the discovery of library resources.

Earliest Palaeocene Purgatoriids And The Initial Radiation Of Stem Primates, Gregory P. Wilson Mantilla, Stephen B. Chester, William A. Clemens, Jason R. Moore, Courtney J. Sprain, Brody T. Hovatter, William S. Mitchell, Wade W. Mans, Roland Mundil, Paul R. Renne

Publications and Research

Plesiadapiform mammals, as stem primates, are key to understanding the evolutionary and ecological origins of Pan-Primates and Euarchonta. The Purgatoriidae, as the geologically oldest and most primitive known plesiadapiforms and one of the oldest known placental groups, are also central to the evolutionary radiation of placentals and the Cretaceous-Palaeogene biotic recovery on land. Here, we report new dental fossils of Purgatorius from early Palaeocene (early Puercan) age deposits in northeastern Montana that represent the earliest dated occurrences of plesiadapiforms. We constrain the age of these earliest purgatoriids to magnetochron C29R and most likely to within 105–139 thousand years post- K/Pg …

Making Sense Of Researcher Positionality In Foundational Literacy Studies Research, Amy J. Wan

Publications and Research

This article is an examination of researcher positionality in literacy studies research through a historiographical study of Brian Street.

The One-Armed Viewer: Voyeurism And Masturbation In Nudist Imagery And Film Spectatorship, Benjamin Eleanor Adam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nudist magazines and newsletters were among the first commercial, legal, and widely-available images of nudity which circulated in the late Comstock Era. To evade censorship, producers developed framing strategies that obscured the sexualized nature of these images, even as they also enabled the viewing practices their sales relied upon. This dissertation traces these framing strategies as they evolved through nudist still-imagery, camp films, and nudie cuties, and considers the evolution of spectatorial pleasures associated with Russ Meyer's early nudie cuties.

The Hamite Must Die! The Legacy Of Colonial Ideology In Rwanda, Awa Princess E. Zadi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

April 07, 1994, will forever remain in the history of Rwanda, as it commemorates the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. In 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people, who were overwhelmingly Tutsi, lost their lives at the hand of their neighbors, friends, and families. Although the genocide occurred 26 years ago, there is still much debate surrounding the cause of this tragedy. While some scholars have suggested that the genocide was triggered by contemporary economic and political factors, this thesis is taking a post-colonial approach by bringing into context the colonial history of Rwanda. In the discussion of these colonial roots, …

Mobile Practices And The Production And Curation Of Pottery: A View From The Ancient Southern Russian Steppe Using Portable Methods Of Investigation, Nicole A. Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The southern Russian steppe is located in an intermediary position between the Caucasus, Lower Don and Lower Volga steppe, between which peoples, goods, and technologies often moved throughout prehistory, likely facilitated by small scale seasonal movements and occasional migrations by mobile pastoralists. Conducted in collaboration with the Steppe Archaeological Expedition of the State Historical Museum’s unfolding research on temporary pastoral camps in the Sal-Manych region of the Rostov oblast and Republic of Kalmykia, this dissertation focused on the production and curation of pottery in contexts associated with the emergence and subsequent development of mobile pastoralism from the late fifth millennium …

Is This My Body? A Manual On Navigating Child Masturbation Without Shame, Stephanie M. Amis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children’s natural exploration of their bodies and sexual expression through masturbation is often considered to be taboo by many adults and caregivers. It is important that children are taught that they have the right to explore their own bodies, to express and experience any sexual developments that may be happening. A child can be innocent and still have the freedom to explore the biological processes of their sexuality. In early Christianity, 19th century physicians and some 20th century psychologists greatly influenced the negative attitudes around aspects of child sexuality such as masturbation that still thrive today. As far as child …

Marine Resource Specialization In Viking Age Iceland: Exploitation Of Seabirds And Fish On Hegranes In Skagafjörður, Grace M. Cesario

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the zooarchaeology of four Viking Age sites on Hegranes, located in Skagafjörður, north Iceland, in order to understand the early economy of the region and place it in a broader context with other settlement sites across the island. This research helps to understand the ways the earliest people in Iceland provided for themselves through niche construction activities that included landscape domestication, animal husbandry, bird hunting, and fishing. It also looks at the zooarchaeological indicators of household autonomy to understand the early social and political landscape in Skagafjörður. At these sites, there is evidence for a specialized …

The Material Culture Of Temperature: Measurement, Capital And Semiotics, Scott W. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temperature was invented in the 17th century. While cosmologists affirm that fluctuations in heat are as old as the universe, the intensive quantified scale marking these fluctuations has a relatively short history. This dissertation analyzes why temperature developed when it did and what temperature does for and to its users. I demonstrate that the ubiquitous and quotidian epistemological artifact temperature epitomizes capitalized methods of seeing, measuring, and knowing. At its broadest, the concern of this dissertation is the material culture of knowledge production among capitalizing populations—those that believe in and practice the perpetually accelerating asymmetrical growth of wealth.

In this …

The American Symphony Orchestra Today: Problems In Community, Diversity, And Representation, Hilary Slade Jansen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the symphony orchestra and its socio-political context in the United States. Using three orchestral case studies—the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Venezuela’s El Sistema—I examine the ways in which American symphony orchestras have responded both today and in the past to the public and academic discourse around social inclusion. Interweaving musicology, sociology, urban anthropology, cultural studies, education, economics, ethnomusicology, economics, data from grant-giving institutions, and from symphony orchestras themselves, I seek to situate the wider discourse on social justice in the arts (which has, until recently, lived largely outside of academia) within a musicological …

Framing The Border: Liminality In The Network Narratives Of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Muhammad Muzammal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores liminality conveyed as displacement before death in the network narrative films of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. Due to their depiction of existential crises and possibly fatal scenarios of several characters in different countries and regions, these network narrative films are colloquially referred to as the “Death Trilogy.” Therefore, rearranging the many strands of death-related abstractions and notions in these films around liminality becomes a jumping-off point to explore deeper layers of these works. Through interdisciplinary yet markedly film studies excavations, this thesis projects the liminal spaces of Iñárritu’s films onto border spaces. With borders considered as sites of …

How Psychotherapists Practice In The Digital Era, Josh Weinstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The digital era, marked by digital devices connected via high speed data networks, has altered human experience in profound ways over the past 40 years. The potential for novel forms of human relating and fulfillment of desire has led to myriad changes in behavior, thought and unconscious activity. While many adapt or thrive in expanded reality, for some, the digital can be context, source and/or location for psychological affliction. When those who suffer seek psychological relief, how psychotherapists listen for, conceptualize and work with the effects of the digital matter a great deal. While theoretical and quantitative research literature exists …

Becoming Material: Devotional Encounters Between Humans And Objects In The European Middle Ages, Debra L. Hilborn-Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In our current moment of profound ecological crisis, scholarship across disciplines is calling for a closer look at the objects proliferating around us in order to find new, increasingly reciprocal ways of relating to the material world. In Becoming Material: Devotional Encounters Between Humans and Objects in the European Middle Ages, I answer this call by looking to the past and examining people’s encounters with material objects described in and around three devotional texts: the Holy Week ceremonies proscribed in the tenth-century monastic agreement, the Regularis Concordia; the embodied devotional practices of a thirteenth-century lay woman, Elizabeth of …

The Singing Self: An Exploration Of Vocality And Selfhood In Contemporary Vocal Practice, Emily C. Eagen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Every vocal training technique relies on understandings of how a singer’s “voice,” both literal and metaphorical, participates in the act of interpreting the works of composers. Western classical singing, as codified by the early twentieth century, typically puts the singer in the role of the “medium” or “channel” for the composer. Later twentieth-century reactions promised liberation from the composer’s “voice” with a validation of the singer’s “authentic” or “natural” voice. This dissertation questions both sides of this binary and asks: what alternative models are possible? This work is in three parts. The first section provides an overview of pedagogical constructions …

Educational Investments In Low-Income Households: The Role Of Parental Occupational Identity And Substitutability, Aparna Anand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Poor parents face difficult trade-offs when investing in their children's education. This dissertation studies how low-income urban households in Southern India, where child labor is a concern, make educational investments for their children. First, I build a model that shows how educational investments are shaped by the possibility of children substituting labor for their parents. Second, I collect parent surveys, child surveys, and student-level administrative data from schools and construct a linked dataset. Third, I examine the relationship between educational investments and several pertinent factors, with an emphasis on child labor substitution and the strength of occupational identity. I find …

Handbook For The Deceased: Re-Evaluating Literature And Folklore In Icelandic Archaeology, Brenda Nicole Prehal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The rich medieval Icelandic literary record, comprised of mythology, sagas, poetry, law codes and post-medieval folklore, has provided invaluable source material for previous generations of scholars attempting to reconstruct a pagan Scandinavian Viking Age worldview. In modern Icelandic archaeology, however, the Icelandic literary record, apart from official documents such as censuses, has not been considered a viable source for interpretation since the early 20th century. Although the Icelandic corpus is problematic in several ways, it is a source that should be used in Icelandic archaeological interpretation, if used properly with source criticism.

This dissertation aims to advance Icelandic archaeological theory …

The Surreal Voice In Milan's Itinerant Poetics: Delio Tessa To Franco Loi, Jason Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of Italy’s linguistic history, dialect literature has evolved a s a genre unto itself. The scope of research presented in this study examines the question of dialect literature as a valid genre which bears lines of demarcation that would assign it the distinction of genre. Research reveals that in fact the simple election of a language, or dialect, does not itself constitute a genre; moreover, most dialect literature bears characteristics that would neatly place it in another genre.

To examine this verity, this research compares two dialect poets who employ Milanese as a means of transmission …

Giglife.Nyc: Blood, Sweat, Tears And Glitter., Erik B. Slavin

Theses and Dissertations

In New York City there's a community of artists who have rejected the obvious choices that the world has offered them and pursued a life of performance and glitter, of bright lights and fire and sensuality.

These performers are extraordinarily compelling. They're artists with lives crafted to entice and delight our gaze. GigLife.NYC: Blood, Sweat, Tears & Glitter is an observational documentary film that invites the viewer, drawn in with the promise of titillating spectacle, to discover the object of their desire is engaged in artistic, romantic, political and economic struggle.

Stranger’S Window, Nation’S Mirror, Kyoko Hamaguchi

Theses and Dissertations

In this text, I consider my identity as a Japanese immigrant in the United States during a global pandemic and its impact on my understanding of home as a liminal space. In particular, I discuss notions of home in relation to my work as an artist including two works that utilize the home-sharing platform Airbnb and three works that deal with the dichotomy of inside and outside.

Be Coming - Transcendence Born From The Concrete, Kathryn Alter

Theses and Dissertations

My interactive virtual world, be coming, is a response to the question, “what happens when art that is made to be performed cannot be shared in a live performance?” In answering this question, I also use as theoretical tools certain works of Benjamin, Deleuze, Guattari and Peter Zumthor.

Fiqws Composition: People, David Stoler

Open Educational Resources

A week by week syllabus that includes instructions for student groups to create an on-line "guide book" instead of a basic portfolio.

Animal-Human Vocabulary Builder, Domenick Acocella, Rene Cordero

Open Educational Resources

The assignment helps students individually build a usable, expanding vocabulary of terms and concepts, enabling each to further contribute to the ongoing, evolving written, oral, and visual conversations centered on the use of and thought about animals for food, clothing, work, entertainment, experimentation, imagery, and companionship.

Belonging And Becoming In Academia: A Conceptual Framework, Maria Savva, Lynn P. Nygaard

Publications and Research

Establishing the conceptual framework for this book as a whole, this chapter looks at the process of developing an academic identity through the lens of ‘becoming’ a scholar, with particular emphasis on the challenges facing international, part-time EdD students. This process involves not only an intellectual breakthrough, but also an emerging sense of belonging. The inner journey – which intersects with and shapes academic progress – comprises a complex set of interactions between the social groups to which we belong, our beliefs about ourselves that come about through experience, the various contexts in which we operate, the position we hold …

Undergraduate Bulletin 2021-2022, Cuny John Jay College

College Bulletins

Covers academic year 2021-2022