Digital Commons Network^™

Socially Safe On Smartphones: How Smartphone Use Reduces Social Risk Taking, Diogo Koch Alves

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Consumers are often faced with decisions that carry a degree of social risk, with uncertain outcomes that could impact their social standing. Examples include choosing the ideal outfit to wear to an upcoming party or selecting a gift to give to a friend. Given the prevalence of smartphones in consumer decision making, I investigate the effect of smartphone use on social risk taking. Across seven studies, I find that smartphone use, relative to the use of other devices, results in a lower propensity to make socially risky decisions. I propose that smartphone use, by increasing the salience of one’s social …

Stereospecific Cross-Coupling Reactions Of Enantioenriched Secondary Alkyltricyclohexyltin Nucleophiles, Meruyert Binayeva

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Transition metal-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions have evolved into a remarkable instrument for the formation of new bonds, and have significantly impacted how we approach to access complex organic molecules. Palladium is currently one of the most popular elements for catalytic applications due to its ability to facilitate powerful carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom couplings. Traditional Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions have primarily concentrated on C(sp2)-C(sp2) cross-couplings, yielding planar products. Considering the use of C(sp3) nucleophiles would offer a viable control of the three dimensional arrangement in molecules. Herein, the first chapter details the history and development of Pd-catalyzed Stille cross-coupling reactions. The use of configurationally …

Law's Legitimacy: Lon Fuller In A Consequentialist Frame, Daniel L. Feldman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues that Lon Fuller’s approach to jurisprudence offers more important support to the rule of law than has been generally recognized. It argues further that a consequentialist lens allows clearer views of Fuller’s strengths in this regard, despite Fuller’s own resistance to consequentialism and despite consequentialism’s blindness to some of Fuller’s depth and texture. This thesis supplies a formula, although one intended only as a guide to thinking, not for actual computation, to drive judicial decision-making. The inputs into this formula are six values widely shared in the United States, modified by case-by-case salience. Kantian deontology strongly influences …

Values In Evidence-Based Policy: Bridging Socio-Political, Moral, And Epistemic Domains, Karyna Pryiomka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Values constitute an inescapable constant of any policymaking or evidence-production process. In this dissertation I explore ways in which socio-political, moral, and epistemic values inform evidence production and use in public higher education policy. In “Chapter One: Introduction and Literature Review”, I provide a brief overview of evidence-based policy as a practice. I then discuss three major categories of values, focusing on higher education examples whenever possible. Finally, I present the central study of this dissertation. The central question of my dissertation is In what ways do epistemic, socio-political, and moral values frame the production and deployment of evidence in …

The Divided Self: Internal Conflict In Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, And Neuroscience, Yulia Greyman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thematic project examines the notion of self-division, particularly in terms of the conflict between cognition and metacognition, across the fields of philosophy, psychology, and, most recently, the cognitive and neurosciences. The project offers a historic overview of models of self-division, as well as analyses of the various problems presented in theoretical models to date. This work explores how self-division has been depicted in the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe, Don DeLillo, and Mary Shelley. It examines the ways in which artistic renderings alternately assimilate, resist, and/or critique dominant philosophical, psychological, and scientific discourses about the self and its …

Cancer In Pajamas: Radio, Podcasts, And The Politics Of Free Time In The Digital Age, Daniel Grjonko

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The podcast, an extremely potent fermentation of the radio which was so central to many of the Frankfurt School thinkers, is an important political subject to consider in light of rekindled social discussions concerning a society straddling the line between fascism and socialism. Especially the political podcast, which has become a pulse of intellectual discussion and historical analysis, promises itself simultaneously as a medium of entertainment, pedagogy, and translation into real-world organizing for a different world, true for both the left and the right. The truth, I propose, is a sinister other experience, one which maintains the status quo …

The Black Map Project: A Black People’S Epistemology Of Healing, Britton Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work is a love letter to Mary Turner and her descendants, by which I mean all Black people, that lifts recipes and roadmaps of Black creative healing and liberatory praxes. It is a freedom dream (Kelley, 2002) that dares to (re)imagine mental health care by holding Black healing and liberation centrally in mind. I do not seek to prove through this work but rather to provoke [thought|action|repair]. In this work, I unsettle prescribed notions of therapy that have long dismissed/erased/ignored the needs and [therapeutic] practices of Black people. The Black MAP Project resists epistemologies of ignorance (Mills, 2022)—born in …

No Ela Without Ella: Understanding The Naming And Crafting Of Gendered Subjectivities In Puerto Rico, Carmín Quijano Seda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the beginning of the 20th century, the official metadiscourses about gendered job titles sedimented the idea that names or indexes pointing to women should be interpreted as unskilled, cheap, or even free labor in Puerto Rico (Azize, 1985; Muñiz Mas, 1998; Baerga-Santini, 1999). For this reason, Puerto Rican women organized and fought for equality in work settings. Furthermore, they became more active in politics and the government. Nevertheless, the Estado Libre Asociado (ELA) and local media discourses and interpretations about women’s labor discouraged them from participating in more senior positions (Acevedo Gaud, 2012).

However, this interpretation seemed to have …

Critical-Race Elementary Schooling: Critical-Race Teacher Change Agents Are Challenging Whiteness In Elementary Schools, David R. Rosas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children in elementary schools think, talk, and reason in big ways that reflect how they live and experience race, racism, and racialization. Some elementary school teachers -- or critical-race teacher change agents -- intentionally include this work in their classrooms. My aim is to find out what motivates critical-race teacher change agents to challenge Whiteness in their classrooms and understand what they say they do to challenge Whiteness with young children.

An emphasis on racial-justice work in elementary schools has often been overlooked by teacher education and has been further pushed back by the recent backlash on critical race theory …

Consonant (De)Gradation In Ingrian?, Andrea M. Harrison

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will present a dual method toward data enrichment for low-resource languages. Using Yoyodyne -- a Fairseq-inspired neural library for small-vocabulary sequence-to-sequence generation -- a morphological generation task was tested across labeled data encompassing multiple stages of enrichment for the low-resource language Ingrian. Due to limitations in the available data for Ingrian, weighted finite-state transducers (WFSTs) were used to generate an expanded vocabulary via HFST's toolkit for Uralic languages, and GiellaLT, a source for FST-driven lexica for low-resource languages. Further stages of experimentation used labeled data from related, higher-resource languages (Finnish, Estonian) to encourage cross-lingual transfer in the interest …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Donor-Acceptor Fluorescent Conjugated Polymers By Acyclic Diene Metathesis (Admet) And Suzuki Polycondensation (Spc), Hamid Ardolic Jr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Conjugated polymers are useful in a wide variety of applications including production of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), Field Effect Transistors (FETs) and organic photovoltaics. Our work in the lab focuses on the development of materials for use in Polymer Solar Cells (PSCs) using various electron donating and electron accepting units to individually tune the Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital (HOMO) and Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital (LUMO) respectively and produce a small but controlled band gap. This is accomplished through the synthesis of several precursors and their subsequent polymerization using Acyclic Diene Metathesis (ADMET) and Suzuki Polycondensation (SPC). Moderately strong electron donors, …

Developing Autonomy And Identity On Tiktok Among Recently Arrived Latin American Migrants To The United States, Camille D. May

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Latin American migrants, as content creators and consumers, active on the social media platform, TikTok, weave webs of ‘self’ across borders, employing narrative identity as a framework to challenge depictions, build community, and navigate power along the migrant journey. Amidst a dramatic rise in both US-bound and global migration, my analysis examines the interplay between technology and migrant narratives and identities across online and offline spaces. While deportation regimes, migration policies, mainstream technology, and state control over migrant bodies impose limitations, social media emerges as a crucial tool for navigating journeys and constructing identities in transit. This academic review explores …

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations Of “Peau D’Âne” In Contemporary French And English Texts, Amy M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations of “Peau d’Âne” in Contemporary French and English Texts explores trans-genre and transmedia adaptations of Charles Perrault’s seventeenth-century fairy tale using feminist and narratological theories to examine gendered aspects of storytelling and the treatment of father-daughter incest and blame in the work of selected French, British, and American creators. Texts are read comparatively, with analyses of the adaptations’ plots, motifs, characterizations, and modifications, both in relation to Perrault and to the other adaptations. This dissertation features prose and poetry texts by female authors—including Christine Angot, Catherine Cusset, and Emma Donoghue—in the first two chapters. Reading these …

Fashion, Freedom, And Feminism: The Transcendent Work Of Rosa Genoni And Her "Tanagra Dress" Reimagined, Christina Trupiano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The fashion industry itself is broad in scope and dependent upon numerous sub-industries to produce its garments. It is heavily dependent upon machinery of all kinds, yet unlike many industries today, it is still also largely reliant on manual labor, specifically minority women labor. This dependance upon manual labor correlates with its long history of worker exploitation and sweated labor. The concentration of exploitative labor practices in the fashion industry have made it a focal point in the ongoing struggle between workers and the downward pressure capitalism and industrialization placed on worker compensation, quality of life and job security.

This …

Organizational Good Epistemic Practices, Lisa Warenski

Publications and Research

Epistemic practices are an important but underappreciated component of business ethics; good conduct requires making epistemically sound as well as morally principled judgments. Well-founded judgments are promoted by epistemic virtues, and for organizations, epistemic virtues are arguably achieved through organizational good epistemic practices. But how are such practices to be developed? This paper addresses this normative and practical challenge. The first half of the paper explains what organizational good epistemic practices are and outlines a means for their construction. The second half of the paper demonstrates how specific good epistemic practices could be developed by considering a case of corporate …

So Many Roads, So Much At Stake: The Composition Of Faculty Bargaining Units, William A. Herbert, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

This book chapter from Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History traces the history of faculty bargaining unit composition in higher education. It examines the evolution in higher education from wall-to-wall bargaining units to professional craft units of tenured, tenure-track, and contingent faculty to separate contingent faculty units. The chapter presents historical examples of bargaining units, starting with early CIO wall-to-wall units in the 1940s, and the facts, preferences, and legal doctrines that has resulted in faculty being placed in combined or separate bargaining under collective bargaining laws. It will also explore the conflicting and congruous …

Ai-Enhanced Detection Of Clinically Relevant Structural And Functional Anomalies In Mri: Traversing The Landscape Of Conventional To Explainable Approaches, Pegah Khosravi, Saber Mohammadi, Fatemeh Zahiri, Masoud Khodarahmi, Javad Zahiri

Publications and Research

Anomaly detection in medical imaging, particularly within the realm of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), stands as a vital area of research with far-reaching implications across various medical fields. This review meticulously examines the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in anomaly detection for MR images, spotlighting its transformative impact on medical diagnostics. We delve into the forefront of AI applications in MRI, exploring advanced machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) methodologies that are pivotal in enhancing the precision of diagnostic processes. The review provides a detailed analysis of preprocessing, feature extraction, classification, and segmentation techniques, alongside a comprehensive evaluation of …

Ai-Enhanced Detection Of Clinically Relevant Structural And Functional Anomalies In Mri: Traversing The Landscape Of Conventional To Explainable Approaches, Pegah Khosravi, Saber Mohammadi, Fatemeh Zahiri, Masoud Khodarahmi, Javad Zahiri

Publications and Research

Anomaly detection in medical imaging, particularly within the realm of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), stands as a vital area of research with far-reaching implications across various medical fields. This review meticulously examines the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in anomaly detection for MR images, spotlighting its transformative impact on medical diagnostics. We delve into the forefront of AI applications in MRI, exploring advanced machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) methodologies that are pivotal in enhancing the precision of diagnostic processes. The review provides a detailed analysis of preprocessing, feature extraction, classification, and segmentation techniques, alongside a comprehensive evaluation of …

The Prisma Statement In Enviropreneurship Study: A Systematic Literature And A Research Agenda, Muath Maqbool Albhirat, Aamir Rashid, Rizwana Rasheed, Shahid Rasool, Siti Nur Atikah Zulkiffli, Hafiz Muhammad Zia-Ul-Haq, Al Montaser Mohammad

Publications and Research

As environmental awareness takes centre stage in business, entrepreneurship research has established a dedicated subfield for sustainability-driven ventures. The growing emphasis on sustainable business practices has led entrepreneurship research to identify entrepreneurship-related sustainability as a critical subfield. However, the inconsistent terminology used, such as “green entrepreneurship,” “ecopreneurship”, and “entrepreneurship” (ENP), reflects the fragmented nature of research in this area. A Systematic Literature Review on entrepreneurship-related sustainability was conducted to address this, focusing on the term “enviropreneurship” and applying PRISMA guidelines for transparency and methodological standardization. A total of 67 research articles published between 2013 and 2022 were analyzed to identify …

Introduction To Theatre Oer Course, Carmen R. Meyers

Open Educational Resources

Study of theatre and performance throughout history and across cultures including an examination of European, Carribean, and North and South American theatrical styles and genres.

This course is organized for a hybrid/asynchronous format. Our class meets on-campus every week for 75 minutes and the other 75 minutes will be completed asynchronously with weekly learning modules on Blackboard.

The first half of the course focuses on the history of theatre from Ancient Greece through Modern Realism. The second half of the course, students engage in the procedures of professional theatre artists through writing and refining a dramatic text; enacting a performance; …

Spanish 120 - Advanced Spanish Grammar & Creative Writing, Kevin Martillo Viner

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Repeat After Me, Bonnie Morano

Theses and Dissertations

Bonnie Morano’s devotional abstract oil paintings are an offering of conviction reconciled with joy. Balancing spiritual zeal with geometric space, she creates mirrored compositions filled with gravitas and play. The sacred and domestic join together in maximal harmony, examining alternative arrangements of transcendental experience.

Pan Shot!, Samuel Robert Gaston Mattax

Theses and Dissertations

Sam Mattax's practice is aimed at working through what he has lived and what he is living. They are self-involved diaristic building blocks of marking time and release. The layered drawings negotiate Sam's history and his day to day, distorting one another into a place of unrecognizable space and condensed energy. It is a process of attaining a loose understanding of his life and forgetting it all at once. Sam's work is survival.

Affectionate Facsimiles, Julio C. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

The paintings in Affectionate Facsimiles are journeys into the expansiveness of color and memory via the accumulation of gestural action. Sporadic freneticism is used to archive desire and time and their relationship to identity. Thin and translucent layers are built up in bursts of intensity as palimpsests of intentioned labor.

Place-Conscious Vs. Place-Bound, Julie Avetisyan

Theses and Dissertations

Julie Avetisyan’s installation of sculptures, paintings and printmaking works are driven by an exploration of constructed identity that is not place-bound, but place-conscious. In this paper, she explores how her art practice generates world building under the context of the Armenian Diaspora – considering histories of indigeneity, migration, and assimilation.

Where The Under And The Over Meet And Disappear, Louisa Owen

Theses and Dissertations

Vignettes of light: light disappearing, light contrasting, light directing, light wandering, and light uncovering.

Art In The Age Of Algorithmic Automation And Artificial Intelligence, Milly Skellington

Theses and Dissertations

The 21st century is examined in order to understand how the artists tools have gained unprecedented autonomy.

Barley As A Human Companion Species - Exploring The Relationship Between Barley And North Atlantic Peoples: 4000 Bc – Ad 1200, Chloe Combs

Theses and Dissertations

Barley (Hordeum vulgare) is an ancient cereal crop originating in the Fertile Crescent approximately 12,000 years ago and is presently one of the most important cereal crops globally. Barley has a long and complex history. This thesis aims to explore one dimension of this history through the lens of human companion species using archaeobotanical data collected from the islands of the North Atlantic from the Neolithic (4,000 BC) to the Norse period (AD 1200).

The Black Arts And Black Power Movements In The Artwork Of John T. Riddle, Jr., Isabella Vitti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the under-studied work of the Black sculptor John T. Riddle, Jr. and how he was influenced by the politics of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. Police brutality, the Vietnam War, the Black Power Movement, and the Watts uprising had a major impact on Riddle’s work.

Crucifixion Can Happen To Anyone: Embodying Christ Through The Queer Artist, Xander Guyer

Theses and Dissertations

In the late 20th century, queer artists incorporated the Crucifixion into their artworks, embodying a crucified Christ in the process. This thesis seats these contemporary works within traditional Christian art history, a position long denied to these transgressively queer artists.