Digital Commons Network^™

Protein Allostery Probed By Ligands Across Sites, Virgil A. Woods

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Allostery is a pervasive regulatory principle throughout biology, yet the structural pathways by which distal inputs alter active‑site chemistry within protein structures remain incompletely defined and exploited. This dissertation uses protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) as a tractable model to map those pathways with complementary experimental and computational tools. I integrate high‑resolution hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS), room-temperature crystallography, NMR, steady-state kinetics, crystallographic pseudo-ensembles, and machine-learning-guided ligand discovery. The working premise is that regulation reflects redistribution within a conformational ensemble rather than a binary switch. That orthogonal perturbations by small molecules, mutations, and protein partners can be used to both …

Courts Of New York: A Visual Atlas Of The City’S Public Basketball Spaces, Nathaniel Rattner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Basketball courts in New York City are recreation facilities, community anchors and part of the city’s cultural image. In the basketball capital of the world, New Yorkers are rarely more than a few blocks away from a court. The visual diversity of these courts, however, is not widely documented in systematic ways.

This project makes that diversity visible to the public, combining open data, aerial imagery and computational analysis to document this important public space across the five boroughs. It is a narrative story and digital atlas of New York City’s public basketball courts, using surface color as a way …

How To Search For The Engram: Optogenetics And Network Dynamics, Claudia Garcia Jou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Memories are thought to be encoded by ensembles of neurons called "engram cells", because their artificial activation with optogenetics leads to the behavioral expression of a memory. However, the physiological mechanisms that mediate this process remain unknown. In this thesis, I investigate how optogenetic stimulation of memory-tagged cells changes neuronal firing, spatial coding, and the geometry of neural manifolds. I used an active place avoidance task and a foraging task to label engram cells in the dorsal hippocampus with Channelrhodopsin2 (ChR2). I then recorded the hippocampal activity response to optogenetic stimulation in mice under anesthesia, head-fixed, or freely moving. I …

The Rhetorical Agency Of Student-Parents: Assembling, Archiving, And Naming Practices And Interpretations That Transform Worlds, Dhipinder Walia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary project that uses interview data collected from six student-parents attending Bronx Community College during 2024 to 2025. Using rhetorical and critical discourse analysis, this dissertation argues student-parents enact their rhetorical agency to transform their college experience. Specifically, student-parents use their rhetorical agency to interpret time and place in a way that centers their own wellbeing as well as the wellbeing of their children. This dissertation focuses on interpretations and ordinary practices that reimagine what time and place can look and feel like on a college campus. Additionally, student-parents enact their rhetorical agency through ordinary practices …

Revolutionary Governance, Culture, And The Party-State In Postcolonial Guinea: Political Thought And Practice Under Ahmed Sékou Touré, M. Sekani Corbie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis reexamines the political thought of Ahmed Sékou Touré by taking seriously the theoretical ambition of the Guinean revolution. Rather than treating Touré as either a failed democrat or a mere ideologue, the study reads his writings and political interventions as a sustained attempt to resolve a core postcolonial problem: how to construct collective power and mass participation in societies fractured by colonial rule, economic dependency, and weak institutional capacity.

Through close readings of Touré’s major texts and the ideological materials of the Parti Démocratique de Guinée, the thesis reconstructs his theory of the Party-State as a distinctive …

Chamber Music For Strings In Rational Intonation: Performance Practice And Analysis, Marina Kifferstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the early 21^st century, the field of contemporary music has experienced an explosion of interest in rational intonation. This ratio-derived tuning system, often referred to as “just intonation,” has become established as a widespread movement that is still on the rise. It is of increasing importance for composers, performers, historians, and theorists who specialize in contemporary music to be knowledgeable about the growing body of repertoire in this area and its performance practice.

This dissertation examines current and recent trends in rational intonation through the lens of chamber music for strings. It includes perspectives on performance practice gleaned …

The Radical Political Possibilities Of Asexuality And Aromanticism, Kirty Singh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores the radical political potential of Asexuality and Aromanticism within queer theory, emphasizing their roles in destabilizing normative constructs of sexuality and romantic relationships. Employing mixed methods, including literature review, digital ethnography of online communities, and analysis of graphic narratives, the research examines how these identities challenge systemic systems such as compulsory sexuality, amatonormativity, and racialized discourses. Findings reveal that Asexual and Aromantic communities utilize flexible definitions and taxonomies to assert their identities, disrupt hegemonic gender and sexual norms, and foster coalitional politics that advocate for systemic change. The study underscores the importance of recognizing Asexuality and Aromanticism …

The Constant Cause Of Friction: Maud Mosher And Gendered Authority In The Indian Service And At Ellis Island, Ella Morton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis focuses on the federal career of Maud Mosher, who, from 1893 to 1907, worked as an Indian Service boarding-school teacher, then a matron at Ellis Island. By analyzing Mosher’s extensive, complaint-driven correspondence and personnel files, as well as an unpublished memoir, I claim that her grievances represent a rare form of agency available to women in maternalist roles at Progressive Era federal agencies. Though Mosher’s superiors branded her complaints trivial, the substance of them reveals gendered hypocrisy and institutional contradictions inside two federal institutions dealing with racialized populations.

In both the Indian Service and the Immigration Service, Mosher …

Somatosensory Cortex Responses To Illusory Touch In A Visual-Tactile Integration Task, Aditi Surendra Pawar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Perceptual illusions arising from multisensory integration reveal how the brain constructs subjective experience from sensory input, and provide a powerful means of allowing the investigation of neural processes that track perceptual interpretation rather than physical stimulation alone. While visual illusions induced by auditory or tactile stimuli have been fairly well studied, the neural mechanisms underlying visually-induced illusory touch remain unclear. This study investigated whether illusory tactile perception engages the somatosensory cortex in a manner similar to veridical touch. Twenty healthy adults participated in an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study while performing a tactile numerosity judgment task. Each trial …

The Experiences Of The Transfer Of Learning Path: Msw's Perceptions Of Organizational Influences, Alexis Howard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public child welfare agencies make substantial financial and organizational investments to support workforce members returning to school to obtain advanced degrees, most notably the Master of Social Work (MSW); however, challenges remain in ensuring that newly acquired knowledge and skills are effectively and continuously applied into practice settings, a process known as transfer of learning. The work environment plays a critical role in shaping organizational conditions that either support or impede successful transfer of learning, yet empirical research remains limited in guiding public child welfare organizations to develop strategies that sustain educational investments and contribute to improved outcomes for children, …

Regional Geography And Tuning Systems Of Traditional Georgian Folk Music, Alex Kutubidze

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The project focuses on the traditional folk music of Georgia, mapping the geographical distribution of singing traditions across the country’s historical regions. Because vocal traditions and stylistic features of Georgian folk music vary significantly across historical regions, the project highlights these differences for the audience, which might be interested in learning Georgian folk music, seeking a basic understanding of its structure, or planning to visit the country for cultural or educational purposes related to folk music.  In addition, this work examines the tonal organization of Georgian traditional music, drawing on recent ethnomusicological research. It engages with ongoing scholarly discussions regarding …

A Critical Lens On Emotions And Learning: Shame, Loneliness, And Alienation In Community College, Mike Rifino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how community college students make sense of and navigate their emotions related to learning. Community colleges are two-year public higher education institutions that primarily serve working-class and students of color, enrolling almost half of all current undergraduates in the United States, yet their experiences are rarely addressed by researchers. Drawing on critical theories (e.g., feminist politics of emotions, Black feminist/queer women of color theorizing), emotions in this study are conceptualized as socio-politically situated, shaped by institutions and ideologies distributed through power across intersecting social identities. Although emotion research in higher education has grown substantially in the past …

At The Margins Of History, The Body Moves And Knows: Carmen As Myth, Flamenco As A Fugitive Form Of Knowledge Transmission, Inmaculada Zanoguera Garcias

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My research, grounded in decolonial historiography and performance studies, examines how Spain has historically relied on the exoticized Other for the construction of its national identity. At the center of my analyses is Carmen, the eponymous protagonist of French writer Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella Carmen. Through this dissertation, I attend to the process through which this fictional character turned into the enduring myth of Carmen—the Orientalized, quintessential Spanish woman—and the consequences that upholding this myth has on the real lives of women, historically and contemporarily. I depart from the assumption that this myth-making process emerged in response to Spain’s inability …

Voces Of Teachers And The Politics Of Literacy: A Case Study Of Multilingual Kindergarten In A Midwestern Urban District, Rachel Chapman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United States is home to more international immigrants than any other country in the world with about a quarter of its children learning two or more languages while growing up. This study explored teachers’ experiences with children's home languages as they learned English for the first time in a kindergarten classroom. In kindergarten, children build their emergent literacy skills as they enter the beginning stages of reading, when children use letter sounds to decode words. Because teachers have largely been left out of the debate about policy formation and curriculum on teaching reading, this study focused on teachers’ experiences …

Introduction To Phonology Ling 323, Ibrahim Abu Elrob

Open Educational Resources

The sound system of languages and underlying representation of the sound structure and lexicon. Analysis of data from different languages; investigation of the differences and similarities in the sound systems of different languages. Exploration of language universals.

Advanced Experimental Learning And Behavior Analysis Lab Manual, Holly R. Weisberg, Sally Izquierdo

Open Educational Resources

Classroom and online lab exercises for a learning and applied behavior analysis course.

Smartphone And Sleep, Jesenia Ortiz, Melanie Bonilla, Eduard Reyes, Jose Rivera

Open Educational Resources

The case study and Decision: You are a data analyst advising a university-affiliated research and wellness initiative that is evaluating whether late-night smartphone use should be formally discouraged as part of student wellness guidance. Over the past academic year, administrators have raised concerns about declining sleep quality among students and its potential impact on academic performance, health, and decision-making. While smartphones are an essential tool for communication and learning, their use immediately before bedtime has emerged as a possible contributor to sleep disruption. The initiative must decide whether the available evidence is strong enough to justify recommending that students limit …

When The World Hits Play, Eileen Mazariegos, Danjela Halilaj, Yosmairy Guzman, Freddy Cruz Osorno

Open Educational Resources

The case study and Decision: In 2025, Lehman College administrators face a critical decision: how can music be strategically used to improve student engagement, emotional well-being, and campus connection? The decision must be made now, as rising academic stress, digital isolation, and declining campus interaction are affecting student experience. Leadership must determine whether to invest in a data-driven, campus-focused music platform or continue relying on generalized commercial streaming experiences that do not reflect student needs. The outcome of this decision will shape how students connect emotionally, socially, and academically on campus.

Oer Accessible Syllabus For Political Science 1100: Intro To U.S. Government, Carmen Melillo

Open Educational Resources

This is a sample OER accessible syllabus intended to create a cost-free Introductory level college course in Political Science and American Government.

Livestreaming A Doitocracy: Platform-Jumping Participatory Practices In Modular Synthesis Gear Cultures, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Earth Modular Society (EMS) is a cross-platform community dedicated to live hardware modular synthesis, with their primary efforts going into a 24/7 modular “radio station” that livestreams on Twitch and YouTube, and a supporting Discord chat server. Although part of the broader modular synthesis gear culture (a large-scale social formation that coalesces around specific classes of fetishized technical objects), EMS represents a new development in gear cultures as it foregrounds live performance and minimizes the accrual of status via conspicuous consumption. The normative governance structures of platform-specific gear culture communities preclude all but one or a handful of users from …

Urgent Expertise, Explored Together: A Scholarly Communication Peer-Mentoring Group, Alex Crowley, Lily Susman, Rosemary Farrell, Michael Kahn, Caroline Jedlicka, Eric Silberberg, Michelle Ehrenpreis, Marta Bladek, Jill Cirasella

Urban Library Journal

In Spring 2025, the authors participated in a structured peer-mentoring program designed to deepen their knowledge of scholarly communication topics and issues. In this article, based on our panel at the 2025 LACUNY Institute, we share our perspectives on the program and discuss how current events are making scholarly communication expertise more essential than ever.

Using What We’Ve Got: Activating Institutional Archives In Uncertain Times, Dorian Onifer, Iris Finkel

Urban Library Journal

Activating institutional archives can provide rich opportunities for original research, the development of multiple literacies, and cultivating a sense of student belonging. This proceedings paper outlines a place-based, primary source research project presented at the 2025 LACUNY Institute. Implemented in a 100-level Library Research course, the project utilized historical yearbooks from our institutional archives to investigate the undergraduate experiences of notable alumni. The replicable design of the project allows for adaptation across disciplines and institutions, offering a flexible model for integrating archival pedagogy and primary source literacy into a broad range of disciplines.

Notes From The Editor, Derek Stadler

Urban Library Journal

I am very pleased to welcome you to the second issue of the 31^st volume of Urban Library Journal, which is a collection of proceedings from the LACUNY Institute held on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 as a hybrid event at City College of New York. The theme of the Institute was “The Persistent Record: Preserving Knowledge in an Uncertain World.” It explored challenges faced by librarians and information professionals across our profession. Presentations delved into the preservation of politicized data, intellectual freedom, censorship, and how information professionals can navigate these challenges in an ever-changing world.

The Black Mother-Daughter Developmental Model: A Life Course Framework For Understanding Matrescence, Identity, And Attachment In Black Family Systems, Brianna A. Baker

Publications and Research

This study introduces the Black Mother-Daughter Developmental Model (BMDDM), a life course framework that theorizes the evolving relational, psychological, and cultural dynamics of Black mother-daughter relationships across generations. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 18 Black women aged 18 to 65 and analyzed to examine patterns of attachment, identity development, rupture, and relational repair over time. Findings yielded a five-stage developmental model: (1) Black Matrescence and Prenatal Conditions, (2) Initial Attachment, (3) Separation and Detachment, (4) Negotiation and Reattachment, and (5) Matrescence Redux and Grandmatrescence. Across stages, participants described how gendered racial socialization, maternal …

Infinite Line, Infinite Knowledge: The 'Spera' And Organized Chaos In Lambert's Encyclopedia, The 'Liber Floridus', Ava Romano

Theses and Dissertations

The Liber Floridus is a medieval encyclopedia renowned for its program of circular diagrams, or sperae. Inside this manuscript of 190 chapters, these diagrams frame and embody written knowledge, revealing a connection between encyclopedism and life in the Benedictine monastery by creating a coherent visual organization of chapters.

Following The Thread: Maria Lai’S 1981 Legarsi Alla Montagna, Claire Borre

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Maria Lai’s (1919-2013) Legarsi alla montagna (1981), a three-day, relational project in which seventeen miles of ribbon were wound through the Sardinian town of Ulassai. In its conception, execution, and legacy, Lai’s project represented a significant challenge to traditional monumentality.

Fugitive Formalisms: Strategies Of Dissemblance And Dissent In The Work Of Queer-Identifying Artists, 1970–Present, Rowan Diaz-Toth

Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing case studies of works by Hélio Oiticica, Scott Burton, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres as points of departure, this thesis puts forth a speculative historical framework for reconsidering queer art practices up through the present day in opposition to regimes of visibility and transparency, exploring the subversive, fugitive potential of non-representational formalisms.

Rhetorical Awareness And Vision In The Four Speeches Of Ellison’S Invisible Man, Asif Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis evaluates Ralph Ellison’s account of rhetoric’s role in establishing, disguising, and contesting racism in the early- and mid-twentieth-century United States. The thesis is structured around four pivotal public orations by the protagonist of Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man. Drawing on Ellison’s private letters and essays to further illuminate his concern for the relationship between speech, public engagement, and self-perception, I propose that Ellison’s novel dramatizes some ways that shifts in speech style, technique, and addressee enable intellectual development and political efficacy. Even techniques that initially appear self-sabotaging and “blind,” Ellison suggests, have the potential to develop into politically …

Simulation Of Quantum Walks For Secure Data Access Patterns, Arslan Ahmad Janjua

Theses and Dissertations

Quantum computing is revolutionizing computational science, offering fundamentally new approaches to information processing that surpass classical limitations. One of the most versatile and powerful tools in this emerging field is quantum walks. Quantum walks are quantum analogs of classical random walks that leverage superposition and interference to explore complex spaces efficiently.

This thesis will explore how discrete-time scattering quantum walks can be simulated and analyzed to investigate patterns of secure data access. By modeling quantum walks on a variety of graph structures and studying the dynamics of marked vertices, the project aims to demonstrate how quantum interference and graph topology …

The Decadent Bible: Biblical Intertextuality In Flaubert’S Herodias And Wilde’S Salome, Shoshana Mintz

Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues that Gustave Flaubert’s Hérodias and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé incorporate biblical intertextuality throughout their work as a means to showcase Decadent technique and themes. Both authors weave direct quotations from biblical sources such as the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Revelation, and Acts into their texts, layering biblical passages with themes of excess, eroticism, and decay central to the Decadent movement. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality, I show how these biblical fragments intersect with narrative voice to destabilize meaning and form a unique, new work of writing that intertwines their own words with biblical …