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The Body And The Sacred In Contemporary Italian Women Writers, Laura R Feola

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation explores the presence of what has been called the “persistence of the sacred” in modern and contemporary Western culture. More specifically, I focus on the intertwining dimensions of the human body and the experience of the sacred in selected works by Dacia Maraini, Elena Ferrante, Cristina Campo, and Alda Merini. Despite their different voices, and the “secular” or “religious” labels with which each of these Italian authors could be defined or confined, I identify and analyze patterns, similarities, and differences in the interwoven realities of the body and the sacred present in their works.[1]

[1] See Snyder, …

The Syndrome Of Romantic Love, Arina Pismenny

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What kind of phenomenon is romantic love? Many philosophers, psychologists, and ordinary folk think it is an emotion. I challenge this assumption and argue instead that romantic love is best characterized as a syndrome ⎼ a pattern comprised of different kinds of mental states and behaviors that tend to co-occur. An examination of major emotion theories in philosophy and psychology demonstrates that romantic love does not fit into any of them. Likewise, the commonly endorsed but increasingly controversial categories of basic and nonbasic emotions do not account for romantic love. While both culture and evolution have shaped the phenomenon of …

Chile’S Decree-Law 1094: A Source Of Immigrant Vulnerability, Joao M. Da Silva

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The South American nation of Chile is rapidly becoming a receiving nation for immigrants from other South American nations and the Caribbean. By December 31, 2017, the immigrant population had surpassed 1.1 million, 300,000 of whom are in irregular status. Immigration to Chile is governed by Decree-Law No. 1094 (DL 1094) of 1975, the oldest immigration law in South America, decreed by the military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet. I argue that the continued application of DL 1094, and the Chilean state’s failure to enact a new law that addresses immigration from a human rights-based approach, contributes to perpetuating …

Insurgent Difference: An Ethnography Of An Indian Resource Frontier, Madhuri Karak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work analyzes resource extraction and development as mutually constitutive logics of rule in India’s bauxite-rich, densely forested Niyamgiri Hills. Nestled in the southwestern corner of Odisha state, the region is marginal to both colonial and postcolonial orders, an inaccessible resource frontier. I discuss how Dongria Kondh and Kutia Kondh communities threatened with displacement by bauxite mining – two of India’s 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups – draw on historically oppositional subjectivities to re-envision relations of power between the state, the market and the commons.

Over the past decade, new forms of sociality borne out of Niyamgiri’s anti-mining social movement …

Women’S/Gender Roles In Contemporary Society, Jasmina Sinanovic

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Perspectives On Natural Philosophy, Stanley N. Salthe

Publications and Research

This paper presents a viewpoint on natural philosophy focusing on the organization of substance, as well as its changes as invited by the Second Law of thermodynamics. Modes of change are pointed to as definitive of levels of organization; these include physical, chemical, and biological modes of change. Conceptual uses of the subsumptive hierarchy format are employed throughout this paper. Developmental change in dissipative structures is examined in some detail, generating an argument for the use of final causality in studies of natural systems. Considerations of ‘internalism’ in science are presented along the way.

Graphic Representations Of Grammatical Gender In Spanish Language Anarchist Publications, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos

Publications and Research

This paper offers a descriptive analysis of the suffixes -@, -x, -e and other orthographic innovations as transgressions to the genderedness of Spanish language. First I discuss the grammatical rules of expressing gender in Spanish and a summary of the ongoing debates concerning linguistic sexism and androcentrism in Spanish language. Then I present some examples of the gender neutral suffixes drawn from articles found in 3 “Do It Yourself” journals published online by three anarchist collectives in Latin America.

Allomaternal Care By Conspecifics Impacts Activity Budgets Of Colobus Guereza Mothers, Dominique L. Raboin

Theses and Dissertations

In primate societies, caring for infants involves nursing, protection, provisioning, and carrying - all energetically taxing states for mothers. The cost of holding and carrying clinging infants often constrains mothers from moving and traveling, potentially reducing their food and energy intake. Alternatively, when an infant is physically separated from their mother they are at risk of predation from birds of prey or other large mammals. This requires a high level of vigilance from mothers, often further deterring them from acquiring the food and energy that they need. Allomaternal care (AMC) is hypothesized to provide mothers with a way to safely …

Jewish Germany: An Enduring Presence From The Fourth To The Twenty-First Century, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Jewish Germany: An enduring presence from the fourth to the twenty-first century.

Civilization, Again!, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Anthropology, Anth 1101, Syllabus, Lisa Pope Fischer

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

The Unexpected In Early Modern Jewish Life, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Playwriting Project [Theater], Celia Braxton

Open Educational Resources

HUT 101, The Art of Theatre, is the entrance level course for the Theatre program. It addresses the integrative learning core competency and the oral communication ability. As a freshman course, it provides a baseline for measurement of this competency and communication ability. It is required of all Theatre majors, and is part of the CUNY Flexible Core in Creative Expression. There are generally more non-majors than majors in the class. This assignment was originally developed during our first mini-grant period (2016-17 the academic year) by Celia Braxton and Abby Gerdts with the global learning core competency rubric and digital …

Book Review-The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On The Disaster Capitalists, Sarah Molinari

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Intro To Soc. Openstax. 2018. Edited By H. Hyodo, Hirosuke Hyodo

Open Educational Resources

Basically, this is a free textbook offered by OpenStax College, a non-profit organization committed to improving student access to quality learning materials. In order to better fit the diverse student body of BMCC of CUNY, however, I edited this and highlighted the parts I edited.

A Recusa De Marx Da Teoria Do Valor, David Harvey, Carine Botelho Previatti

Publications and Research

Resumo:

Harvey compara a teoria do valor-trabalho de Ricardo e a teoria do valor adotada por Karl Marx, trazendo uma amostra das discussões de seu mais recente livro, Capital e a loucura da razão econômica. O autor discute as diferenças entre essas teorias e seus desdobramentos nos estudos marxistas atuais, concluindo que a forma valor dos estudos de Marx não pode ser considerada um “princípio imóvel e estável no mundo tumultuado do capital, mas uma métrica instável e em constante mudança”, que se expressa nas “novas práticas de reprodução social e massivas transformações nas vontades, necessidades e desejos de toda …

Stranger-Making As Difference: Childhood Memories Of Belonging And Exclusion By Undergraduates Of Color, Debbie Sonu, Marissa Bellino

Publications and Research

In this article, we draw from the notion of stranger-making to focus on how undergraduates of color at one large university in New York City recount their subjective experiences with inclusion and exclusion at the borderlands of educational spaces. We use narratives to evoke the unfolding of life events and to destabilize categories of difference that are all too often based on a politics of perception rather than an ethical gesture to know. This paper presents four selected vignettes that demonstrate the instability of being a racialized human and draws attention to how belong- ing, or socially felt memberships, is …

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.

Violence In Prostitution, Serena Maszak

Student Theses

It is estimated that the majority of prostitutes are victims of violence, including rape and homicide. Some research has suggested that the clients of sex workers perpetrate most of these acts of violence. While several qualitative studies have examined specific incidents of violence, the prevalence and causes of violence in prostitution remain largely unaddressed by the existing literature. This study compares attitudes towards sexual violence and prostitution between men who have purchased sexual services and those who have not. Participants were 170 men recruited online, with 35 (20.6%) participants self-identifying as those who had previously purchased sex. Overall, a significant …

Among The Palms1, Lee Haring

Publications and Research

Born out of the convergence of intellectual traditions and owning a borrowing capacity analogous to the one that engenders creole languages, the study of folklore, or folkloristics, claims the right to adapt and remodel political, psychological, and anthropological insights, not only for itself but for the humanities disciplines of philosophy, art, literature, and music (the “PALM” disciplines). Performance-based folkloristics looks like a new blend, or network, of elements from several of those. What looks like poaching, which is a common practice for folksong and folk narrative, can be examined in the PALM disciplines under names like intertextuality and plagiarism. Nation-oriented …

Fair Chase: A Cinematic Essay On Hunting In The Northeast U.S., Rahul Chadha

Theses and Dissertations

FAIR CHASE is an experimental ethnographic film examining hunting in the Northeast United States. It documents various aspects of hunting—the ritualistic preparation that precedes the hunt, the actual hunt itself, and the post-kill butchering of animals—using an observational style influenced by the direct cinema movement.

The Market, Claudia Zamora Valencia

Theses and Dissertations

The Market is a short science fiction essay film that explores ideas and values attached to the “local food” movement, and how they manifest themselves in the act of consumption at a farmers’ market in a gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

The Pond & The Sauna, Kaija Siirala

Theses and Dissertations

Combining interviews, observational footage, animation, archival images, video and film, The Pond & the Sauna examines the construction of home and family through an intergenerational collection of memories. Drawing on oral history traditions, the project traces the foundational threads that run through the lives of an extended family from past into the present. How do the values we learned as children manifest in our lives now? How do we negotiate our place within a wider social context? How are we moving through the cycles of life and what do home and family mean to us now?

Do Osteon Morphotypes Identified In The Mid-Diaphysis Of Human Femurs Indicate The Same Torsional Load History As Chimpanzees?, Bailey A G Colohan

Theses and Dissertations

Skedros’s (2009) osteon morphotype scoring (MTS) scheme is employed to identify if humans have the same torsional load-bearing history as chimpanzees at the femoral mid-diaphysis. Humans show to have no significant difference between quadrants of this area’s MTS, congruent with what is expected in a torsional load-bearing area of bone.

Still Acting Up? Voices From Actup's Oral History Project On The Current State Of The Lgbtq Community, Michael D. Mahana

Theses and Dissertations

Examination of the ACTUP Oral History Project using assimilation and activist identity theories reveals activists’ questionable presumptions about LGBTQ marriage, conflations of LGBTQ and activist identities, and nostalgia. Findings suggest a transformation from counterculture to assimilated subculture via segmented assimilation in which advantaged cohorts assimilate while others do not.

American Kathaks: Embodying Memory And Tradition In New Contexts, Anisha Muni

Theses and Dissertations

Kathak, a classical Indian dance, is practiced in the US by hundreds of practitioners. Through ethnographic research, this study asks how nostalgia, authenticity, tradition, and gender meet in the collective Kathak memory, examining what the study and performance of the dance symbolizes within American contexts.

The Economics Of Skin Tone In Nineteenth-Century Maryland, Yuree Kim

Theses and Dissertations

I analyze the effect of subtle differences in skin complexion on heights of free blacks in Maryland during the nineteenth century. I propose that lighter-skinned blacks were taller (indicating better nutrition) than their darker counterparts. I find the hypothesis holds - 15.9% taller for males and 16.5% taller for females.

The Things They Do Here: Work And Greek Orthodox Death In New York City, Paul Melas

Theses and Dissertations

Based on six months of ethnographic research at a Greek catering hall in Brooklyn, this paper explores how death mediates and negotiates the relationship between the catering hall (and those who are employed by it), and the Greek patrons who come to mourn and celebrate their dead.

A New Estimate For Neanderthal Energy Expenditure, Stephen J. Venner

Theses and Dissertations

This study presents a new estimate for Neanderthal total energy expenditure through the use of a constrained energy model. The new estimates for Neanderthal are considered within the context of some recent analyses investigating Neanderthal life history traits, genetics, and the archaeological record.

Climate Change And Threatened Heritage: Archaeology's Burden, Barry R. Gordon

Theses and Dissertations

Climate change and archaeology are currently intertwined, as more and more archaeologists around the world must deal with the effects it causes on the sites they work on. Threatened cultural resource sites are being swept away at alarming rates, and excavation projects are becoming more and more like salvage digs.