Digital Commons Network^™

Reclaiming South Asian Beauty, Rizwana Zafer

Capstones

Shows like Never Have I Ever, Bridgerton, and Love Is Blind have put South Asian beauty at the forefront of American media. However, the increased popularity of these shows has also reignited an interest in the appropriation of South Asian beauty trends. Through their work in the beauty industry and social media, Arpita, Susana Mollick, and Soni Kohli are reclaiming South Asian beauty in the face of appropriation.

Link to capstone project:

https://medium.com/@rizwana.zafer81/reclaiming-south-asian-beauty-9d8484f00a14

Flying Hope: Bringing Pets To Safety In Nyc, Jose D. Santiago-Morales

Capstones

The animal overcrowding issue is impacting stray pets in Puerto Rico. Various not-for-profit organizations in NYC (The Sato Project and Wings of Rescue) are working to bring these animals from the island to states across the Northeast of the United States and helping by finding them their forever homes. One pet at a time.

https://dansantiagojournalist.wordpress.com/2023/10/01/flying-hope-bringing-pets-to-safety-in-nyc/

Unpure: Serving The Purity Culture Deconstruction Community, Julia Capizzi

Capstones

Unpure: Serving the Purity Culture Deconstruction Community is an in-depth understanding of how engagement journalism can serve those who are deconstructing, or unlearning, harmful religious beliefs around sex and sexuality.

New York City’S Wage Theft Crisis, Amanda Rozon

Capstones

In New York City, all workers regardless of citizenship status are granted the same rights under New York State labor laws. But in the construction industry, undocumented immigrant workers who are reluctant to report violations are at risk of being exploited by their employers and often fall victim to wage theft. Despite efforts by the city and local immigrant rights organizations, wage theft remains high; according to a study by the Center For Popular Democracy, New Yorkers are cheated out of roughly $3 billion annually. https://medium.com/@amanda.rozon37/new-york-citys-wage-theft-crisis-9595917491ce

To Destroy Or Transform? Two Fossil Fuel Transitions Offer Glimpse Into Industry’S Future, Chloe Bennett, Sarah Kerson

Capstones

In 2019, the Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery closed after a dangerous explosion. But for years before the accident, members of the local environmental justice organization Philly Thrive had been advocating for its closure. Neighborhood residents who live near the refinery site had been complaining for years of health problems, ranging from asthma to cancer. “Enough is enough,” says Sylvia Bennett, 79, who lives in the Grays Ferry neighborhood near where the refinery is located. Her two daughters have both been diagnosed with cancer.

What will become of the refinery site remains to be seen as conversations between Hilco and …

Engagement Journalism In Action: Supporting New Yorkers With Long Covid, Sarah Luft

Capstones

What do asthma and long COVID have in common? 1 in 13 U.S. adults are living with them. This report is a recap of my efforts to address the information needs of New Yorkers with long COVID as a student in CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism engagement program. For my final project, I partnered with THE CITY, a nonprofit news outlet serving New Yorkers, to expand the MISSING THEM project. The report details the what, why, and how of my engagement reporting process, including a community engagement framework, a service journalism series, and lessons to carry forward. You …

After Being Ignored, Autistic Adults Find Their Place On The Spectrum, Leonardo A. Lopez Carreno

Capstones

Autistic adults have been historically ignored by researchers and clinical psychologists when discussing autism spectrum disorder. But the broadening of the diagnosis requirements for the disorder, as well as the perspectives from autistic adults that have been shared on social media, have made it so that autistic adults are being discussed more now than ever before, both in the autism community and among professionals in the field. This project puts together interviews with autistic people who have found communities online and in person, as well as the perspectives of researchers who have published studies about autism.

https://medium.com/@leonardolpezcarreo/after-being-ignored-autistic-adults-find-their-place-on-the-spectrum-6e131fc00796

New York Running, Kellen Bulger

Capstones

My community is the New York City running community. This includes everyone from casual joggers to high school track athletes to folks training for an ultramarathon. The community also encompasses all five boroughs. For my community practicum project, I plan to host my second event/run in the community, where we will discuss the overall state of the running community in NYC. The successes, shortcomings, frustrations, and whatever else is on our minds. As I did with the last event, the discussion that takes place after our run will be loosely structured around this community-wide callout I distributed in the spring …

Navigating Food Affordability In The Two Bridges Neighborhood, Aina S. Izham

Capstones

This report examines a small neighborhood in Lower Manhattan of New York City called Two Bridges and how they're facing gentrification with a focus on food affordability. Ever since an affordable supermarket closed down in 2012, long-time residents have since struggled to get affordable groceries and are forced to face expensive supermarkets that have been on the rise in the area. Incorporating my journey to understand and listen to the community to find ways to support and work with the community, this report demonstrates that the neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying like most black and brown neighborhoods in New York City. …

Death Spaces And Distant Skies (Every Day We Say Goodbye), Renee Estee

Theses and Dissertations

Linking ideas and imagery of the Australian Outback, Hauntology and Orphism, my practice highlights myth-making and rituals surrounding mourning, celebration and commemoration. Operating as visual love letters and epitaphs, my paintings coalesce figuration and abstraction to conjure spaces where I can commune with the deceased and contend with future loss.

What An Interesting Video To Put On The Internet (An Amusing Economic Indicator), Dahlia S. Bloomstone

Theses and Dissertations

My exhibition reconciles representations of domesticity, labor, and morality through the lens of sex-work (SW). It consists of video work, a video game, and free-to-take objects, where donation, the strip club, and the fish tank converge. My work concludes that SW is a timeless construct that will always exist even after reimagining multiple worlds.

​​Pr 101: A Resource For New Public Relations Professionals, Ilana M. Weinberger

Publications and Research

The field of public relations (PR) is often misunderstood, despite the fact that it is a growing field (Fawkes, 2018). New employees enter the field of PR every year, whether as new graduates or as those making a career change, yet the intricacies of working in PR are not generally taught in the classroom (Meganck, Smith & Guidry, 2020). Most people do not have a solid understanding of what PR professionals do on a day-to-day basis, and in fact, many of those entering the field don’t either. They may think that PR is simply social media management, or even confuse …

Spatial Metaphors In Introductory Statements Of Humanities And Stem Disciplines: A Study Of English And Mechanical Engineering Departments, Olalekan T. Adepoju

Publications and Research

Advances in higher education, specifically in science and technology, have engendered a significant shift of interest from a mainly liberal arts curriculum to STEM-related fields of study, creating a rift in the value systems undergirding the two academic domains. One of the ways the disciplinary disparity is institutionally expressed is through the language used in describing the core values of these disciplines, specifically in the introductory statements of departments. Using the lens of spatial metaphor to consider how the language expresses distinct realities that align with the public perceptions of the disciplines, this paper examines the metaphorical framings in the …

The Contemporary "White Trash" Memoir In Literary, Social And Political Contexts, Ursula Hansberry

Student Theses and Dissertations

This senior thesis is about class in the United States, as expressed and represented in three critically and popularly successful memoirs published by white working-class writers between 2005 and 2018. My thesis explores how these memoirs and their critical and commercial reception demonstrate a profound shift in cultural and social representations of white working-class upbringings in the United States, although not in any simple or obvious way. While readers intuitively grasp that a memoir is not the truth in a directly literal sense, but rather a document that is constructed, edited, framed, shaped, and dramatized, readers and critics at the …

Music In The Holocaust: The Roles Of Music In Nazi Concentration Camps, Jennifer L. Lefleur

Theses and Dissertations

The atrocities and horrors of the Holocaust are well-known and well-documented. Hitler’s “Final Solution” was to eradicate all Jews from Europe, and to implement this, the Nazis built six extermination camps in Poland. These camps, and others throughout Europe, mass-killed millions of humans between 1933 and 1945. Prisoners in these camps were consumed by torture, terror, and murder on a daily basis. Although most survivor accounts detail the role music played in these camps, it had been in the last twenty to thirty years that musicologists and historians have really delved into this subject.

While there were different types of …

Latinos Move The Us Economy, But Hardly Get To Write About It, Ana T. Sola

Capstones

Cuando se escribe sobre la economía, hay que incluir una diversidad de voces en la historia porque todo el mundo participa en la economía de una forma u otra. La misma filosofía debe aplicarse a quien escribe estas historias. Sin embargo, dentro de todas las complicaciones que existen dentro de la industria de las comunicaciones, hay un problema en particular desatendido.

El campo de estudios económicos tiene fama de carecer de expertos de diversa procedencia, y parece repetirse en la industria del periodismo. Antes de este proyecto, solo se me occuría un puñado de periodistas latinos especializados en el area …

Music Meets Algorithm: How Tiktok Is Changing The Music Industry For Independent Artists, Tatiana Krisztina Morales

Capstones

Music Meets Algorithm: How TikTok is changing the music industry for independent artists - A profile of two music artists who have had their career kick off after posting videos on TikTok that went viral. Link to Capstone Project: https://tatianakrisztina.wixsite.com/website/capstone

Parent-Child Relationship Quality, Emotion Reactivity, And Suicide Ideation Among Adolescents, Deborah Schaeffer

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of teenage suicide has increased markedly in recent years, highlighting the need for greater understanding of the factors that underlie such behavior. While separate studies have established significant associations between the quality of the parent-child relationship and suicide ideation, and between emotion reactivity and suicide ideation, no prior research has examined the interaction of these variables. The current study used survey data collected from 111 youth recruited in emergency departments and inpatient units to measure parent-child relationship quality (the PACHIQ-R scale) and emotion reactivity (the ERS) as predictors of severity of suicide ideation at three months into the …

If You Live In New York City, You’Re (Probably) At Risk Of Flooding. Here’S What To Do About It. Digging Into The Information Needed To Live In Nyc As The Climate Changes, Christine A. Zirneklis

Capstones

New York City is a city of water — over 520 miles of rivers, ocean, canals and harbor. Historically, much of what is now New York city was wetlands and marshes. 1.3 Million New Yorkers, or about 15% of residents currently live in a coastal floodplain. More than half of those identify as non-white, and more than half live in areas with low median income.

As severe storms and rainfall become more common with the changing climate, many more neighborhoods further inland, away from the coast, are being impacted by inland flooding which is caused by sewer overflow. New York’s …

Understanding Karaoke’S Popularity In America, Aki Camargo

Capstones

In 2021, the karaoke bar industry generated over 1 billion dollars in revenue in the U.S., surpassing other nighttime staples like comedy clubs. What makes singing other people’s songs on stage so hot? Aki Camargo finds that karaoke bars plays a unique role in mainstream American culture.

Black Cosplayers Push For Proper Dark-Skinned Character Representation In Media, Taylor K. Johnson

Capstones

As cosplay continues to rise in popularity at comic conventions, anime conventions and on social media, Black cosplayers push for media companies to invest in adding more dark-skinned characters in their shows and games.

Afghan Refugees Engagement Journalism, Angrej Singh

Capstones

My community of focus is Afghan refugees who came to the U.S. after Aug. 15, 2021. Since mid-Aug. of 2021, nearly 76,000 Afghan refugees came to the U.S. after living across eight U.S. military bases for a few months — with the help of resettlement agencies — they have resettled to 48 states in which they are starting to rebuild their lives. During the uncertainty of their legal status, multiple Afghan led organizations have been calling on Congress to pass an Afghan Adjustment Act. This legislation would create a pathway for permanent status to the thousands that were granted entry …

Theorizing, Bounded Rationality, And Expertise: Cognitive Sociology And The Quasi-Realism Of Problem-Solving As A Course Of Activity, Michael W. Raphael

Publications and Research

The question facing sociology is whether it is a field or a discipline. If it is a field, then there is no need for theorizing. However, if sociology is a discipline, then problem-solving cannot be disentangled from theorizing without a loss of intelligibility – the inability to explain the social as the concept of the discipline. Through the quasi-realism of problem-solving as a course of activity, this chapter presents cognitive sociology as a paradigm appropriate to the concept of the social understood as an ongoing course of activity. In doing so, it is shown how bounded rationality and expertise play …

An Event-Without-Witness: A Nietzschean Theory Of The Digital Will To Power As The Will To Temporalize, Talha Issevenler

Publications and Research

This article offers a Nietzschean theory of digital will to power to conceptualize the temporality of social media feeds run by algorithms. Stylistic and methodological temporalities of Nietzsche are discussed as well as their influence in subsequent social theory of political technologies. The paradox of heavy investment in both subjective expression and nonhuman temporalization in social media milieus is addressed with the concept of an event-without-witness drawn from Nietzsche’s account of himself as the solitary thinker of catastrophe of nihilism and psychoanalytical and deconstructive literatures on the catastrophes of the 20th century. Nietzsche’s fundamental resistance to and fascination with the …

Digital And Ebook Publishing, Philip M. Rappaport

Open Educational Resources

OER-based syllabus for ENGL 31131 Publishing Certificate Program course at City College, to expose students to career opportunities in New York City's publishing industry.

Special Education Teachers’ Perceptions Of Self-Determination Supports In Inclusion Classrooms, Suzanne Tiffany-Salogub

Theses and Dissertations

The outcomes presented in this dissertation were motivated by a scarcity of research that explores self-determination practices explicitly within inclusive classrooms. Three overarching goals motivated my research. The first was to understand what inclusion teachers know and do in relation to self-determination (Chapter 2). The second was to understand how their practices align with existing knowledge about self-determination in the field (Chapter 3). Finally, I sought to create an accessible, research-based tool tailored to inclusion teachers who seek to support their students in developing self-determination skills (Chapter 4). To achieve these goals, I designed an investigation using a case-study design …

Children And Technology: Why Technology Is Important For Our Children, Jill Mactiernan

Student Theses

Many people get scared when they hear about how much technology runs the world today. They tend to get frightened when they go to a store and have to use a selfcheckout instead of a cashier. Parents are scared of the dangers of the internet and how it will affect their children, so they tend to try to prevent/limit their children’s usage of the internet and other technologies. However, that may not always be the right move. Technology can not be avoided; it is a part of our everyday lives. With proper guidance and teachings, children can learn how to …

Digital Humanities At Work In The World, Sarah Ruth Jacobs

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

“Together We Arrived And Together We Shall Leave”: The Gouverneur Parents Association And The Politics Of Race And Disability In Postwar New York, Jorge A. Matos

Publications and Research

This essay documents the history of the Gouverneur Parents Association (GPA), a group of mostly Black and Latinx parents whose disabled children were institutionalized at the Gouverneur Division of the infamous Willowbrook State School in New York City. The GPA, in coalition with Black, Latinx, and White parents and activists, led a campaign during the 1970s and 1980s to close Willowbrook, then part of a national network of sites denounced by disability activists during the heyday of the deinstitutionalization movement. In this essay I argue that the postwar migration of Black and Latinx communities into New York City amid an …

Implementing Oer At Laguardia Community College: Three Case Studies, Ian Mcdermott, Joshua P. Tan, Alioune Khoule, Marta Kowalczyk, Emma Handte, Rena D. Grossman

Publications and Research

LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York (CUNY) began receiving funds from a New York State Open Educational Resources (OER) grant in 2017. Since then, several departments have made significant strides in the implementation of OER. We offer three case studies of putting OER into practice, in math, astronomy, and chemistry. Each case study presents the context for OER conversion, the steps taken, early results from OER implementation, and the main takeaways. A common feature across courses and departments is a process-oriented implementation of OER, namely, one that is constantly improving and moving towards the goal of openness and …