Digital Commons Network^™

Centering Well-Being And Wholeness: Exploring Racial Battle Fatigue Among Black 3-K To Twelfth-Grade Teachers, Olubunmi Fashusi

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study, with some descriptive statistics, examined Black 3-K through 12th- grade teachers’ experiences with racial battle fatigue (RBF), the psychological and behavioral stress responses they perceived most accurately convey how RBF manifests for them, and the strategies they used to disrupt RBF’s impact. Participants experienced compounded RBF due to advocating for students (i.e., speaking out, supporting, or intervening). Participants’ most perceived psychological stress response to RBF was racism awareness, and most perceived behavioral stress response was spirituality or religion. Participants disrupted the impact of RBF through intrinsic care (i.e., purpose or why, managing emotions, and self-care) and …

Kitchen Table Press: A Case Study Of Regression To The Neoliberal Mean, Alaina Disalvo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the idealistic founding of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980 and its slow downfall, culminating in the cession of ownership of the Press to a university in 1992. It traces the ideological development of Kitchen Table Press’s key founders, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde, and their respective relationships to the ideologies of other renowned feminist figures of the era, specifically June Jordan and Adrienne Rich. It examines the history of the Press through historical, intersectional, affective, and socialist lenses. This thesis argues that neoliberal pressures can bend even the most radical organizations away from their …

Managing Migration And Political Change: Lessons From Sweden’S 2015 Asylum Crisis For South Korea’S Emerging Immigration Era, Sean Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this capstone project is to analyze how two nations that have little in common in terms of geography or politics have been required to deal with immigration issues in ways that their institutions did not anticipate. One nation has been dealing with immigration-related issues for some time now, while the other nation has yet to do so. In 2015, when Sweden received approximately 162,000 asylum applications in one year alone, Sweden’s housing systems were strained, many of the municipalities were unable to keep up with the demand, and the political climate began to shift in ways that …

The Impact Of Multi-Brand Promotions On Visual Distinctiveness And Consumer Choice, Melanie Isabel Paul Austin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In cluttered retail environments, marketers must often decide whether to showcase a brand alone in a single-brand promotion, or alongside other brands in a multi-brand promotion. Prior research has explored the role that different retail promotions play in consumers’ choice contexts. This research explores how multi-brand promotion versus single-brand promotions impact consumers’ purchase behavior. Study 1 uses secondary scanner data to show that multi-brand promotions lead to significantly higher sales of the promoted product compared to single-brand promotions. Study 2 replicates our secondary data findings in a quasi-field study with actual choice behavior. A series of lab studies again confirm …

New Age Spirituality In Post-Secular Turkey: Navigating Secular Sensibilities And Class Privilege, Zeynep Ozbarlas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The conflict between religion and secularism has been one of the major forces shaping Turkey’s socio-political landscape since the late nineteenth century. With the radical secular turn during the founding of the Turkish Republic, secularism remained the dominant force until the rise of political Islam in the 1980s. This dissertation, grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, argues that New Age spirituality, adopted by the secular upper-middle class, has become an alternative venue for the reproduction of secular sensibilities and socio-economic privilege in contemporary Turkey, at a time when the two-decade tenure of the Erdoğan regime has undermined secular hegemony.

Although New Age …

Goddess In A Trash Can: Religious Ritual Disposal In New York City Public Parks, Zoe Oro-Hahn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Practitioners of Afro-Caribbean religions, including Santería, Vodou, Espiritismo, and Las 21 Divisiones, utilize the New York City Public Parks system to hold rituals, connect with spirits and ancestors, and dispose of religious remains leftover from trabajos (workings) and brujería (witchcraft). Utilizing photos from Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, my thesis considers the religious, political, social, and practical rationale behind this phenomenon, explores the rituals occurring, and provides policy suggestions that balance religious needs of practitioners with the safety and wellbeing of New York City’s parks.

Assessing The Influence Of Disability Views On Perceptions Of Hearing Aids Among Older Korean Adults, Stasha Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background

Age-related hearing loss, also known as presbycusis, is highly prevalent among older adults, yet hearing aid adoption remains low, in part due to concerns about stigma and negative social perceptions. This study aimed to examine whether attitudes towards disabilities influence perceptions of individuals wearing hearing aids among older Korean adults. It also explored the potential effects of cultural identity and the age of the individual wearing the hearing aid on these perceptions.

Methods

Ten participants completed the Attitudes and Perspectives on Persons with Disabilities (APPD) questionnaire and rated 8 different images of individuals (one younger male and one older …

New York State Excelsior Scholarship Program: A Post-Implementation Analysis Of Student Success, Eligibility, And Indebtedness – An Intersectional Study Of Black And White Female Students, Marcus I. Richardson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The New York State (NYS) Excelsior Scholarship Program, introduced in 2017, was designed as a “first-in-the-nation” tuition-free initiative intended to expand college affordability for undergraduate students attending public institutions in New York State. While the program aims to increase access to higher education, its eligibility requirements, particularly the expectation that students complete 30 credits annually through continuous full-time enrollment, may disadvantage students whose academic pathways diverge from traditional enrollment patterns. This study examined the relationship between structural, financial, and academic factors and students’ ability to retain Excelsior Scholarship eligibility at the City University of New York (CUNY). Using institutional data …

Revolutionary Petunias In The Hallways: Adultification, Identity, And Black Girls’ High School Experiences, Renee Niles

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how adultification, the racialized misperception of Black girls as more mature, responsible, and self-sufficient, shapes high school experiences and identity development. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory and Black feminist epistemology, the study draws on interviews with eight Black women to explore how these experiences are interpreted over time. The study conceptualizes adultification as a form of developmental governance, an ongoing structural process that regulates perception, behavior, and identity from adolescence into adulthood.

Music Appreciation In Cochlear Implant Users: A Questionnaire, Hanna Davidson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cochlear implants provide significant benefits for speech perception in individuals with severe to profound hearing loss; however, music perception and appreciation remain challenging due to limited spectral and temporal resolution. This study examined music appreciation in post lingually deafened adult cochlear implant users, focusing on changes in enjoyment, listening behaviors, and subjective experiences following implantation. Sixteen adults completed a 36-item questionnaire assessing pre- and post-implant music engagement, perceived sound quality, and emotional responses to music. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, and qualitative responses were analyzed thematically.

Results indicated a moderate decline in music enjoyment following …

The Hope Dionysos (After Augustus): A Post-Actian Reading Of Dionysian Imagery, Jane Horman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the center of the Roman court at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York stands an almost seven-foot-tall statue of an androgynous looking figure, leaning on a smaller statue of a woman. This piece, formally known as Statue of Dionysos Leaning on a Female Figure, has been nicknamed the Hope Dionysos for both the archaic statue he is leaning on, as well as the family to whose collection he belonged for many years. However, in its day, the statue occupied a complicated place in Roman culture. This paper will examine the ways in which Dionysos, specifically through …

Access Denied: Financial Aid Inequalities And The Economic Impact On Daca Students, Teresa D. Jordan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project argues that financial aid policies in the United States create a system of structural inequality that systematically denies Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients’ equitable access to higher education. Drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship, federal policy data, and large-scale survey research, this paper demonstrates how the categorical exclusion from federal financial aid, inconsistent in-state tuition laws, and recurring DACA renewal fees form an interlocking barrier with profound psychological and economic consequences for a population that is deeply integrated into American society. These compounding barriers force students into a framework of constrained rationality, distorting their academic major choices …

Trans-Cyber Cinema: Digital Embodiment In Science-Fiction Films, Sophia R. Schrock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis aims to define the trans-cyber genre within cinema. By looking retroactively at a selection of nine films made across various decades and countries, this genre connects these films through their visualization and thematization of both trans and cyber embodiments, whereby the trans-cyber being emerges. Before the cinematic analysis and explanation of the three generic conventions selected for this thesis – transformation of body/gender; altered reality, memory, and temporality; and, radical death – the two intertwining theoretical frameworks will be established. This includes a brief summary of applicable transgender theory, and an introduction to cyborg theory (using Donna Haraway’s …

A Hot Topic:
Congressional Polarization And Climate Change, Mercedes R.P. Wilby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars offer competing explanations for how congressional polarization develops and operates. The literature variously points to shifting agendas, procedural change, or member adaptation or replacement. In this project, I study how congressional polarization occurs by asking what mechanisms account for the emergence of climate policy polarization. Climate policy is a useful test case to evaluate these competing theories. As a relatively low-salience, highly technical issue that is neither new nor inherently ideological, it is not an obvious candidate for deep partisan division. Yet climate policy has become sharply polarized, extending partisan disagreement even to the underlying science.

In order to …

Implicit Attitudes Toward Hearing Aid Visibility: Conspicuous Versus Inconspicuous Hearing Aid Colors, Orly R. Ames

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hearing aid stigma remains a significant barrier to treatment uptake, with device visibility frequently identified as a contributing factor. Although prior research has examined visibility in relation to hearing aid size and style, the role of color as a distinct aesthetic dimension has not been systematically investigated. The present study assessed whether hearing aid color affects implicit and explicit attitudes toward hearing aids and whether such evaluations differ across contexts. Twenty-six adults who were not current hearing aid users participated in an online quantitative multi-method study consisting of an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report questionnaires. The IAT measured implicit …

A Comparison Of Manufacturers’ Claims Of Attenuation Rates In Non-Custom Earplugs, Skyler M. Shipley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recreational and social environments frequently expose individuals to high intensity noise environments; however, the use of hearing protection devices (HPDs) remains limited. This study evaluated whether non-custom, over-the-counter musicians’ earplugs provide attenuation consistent with manufacturers’ claims and whether cost is associated with performance. Six commercially available earplug models were tested using both human participants and a KEMAR manikin system. Attenuation was measured across frequencies from 250–8000 Hz (octave and inter-octave frequencies) and were tested using different ear tip sizes. Results indicated that several earplugs achieved attenuation levels comparable to or exceeding their advertised noise reduction ratings (NRR), though consistency varied …

Twitteratura: Digital Social Reading And Active Reception Of Literary Texts In The Context Of Italian Contemporary Literature, Iuri Moscardi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores Digital Social Reading (DSR) as a novel mode of literary engagement, focusing on the Italian project Twitteratura, a series of social reading experiments conducted on Twitter (2012–2016) and later on the Betwyll app. The research situates Twitteratura within the intersection of Reader-Response Theory, Digital Humanities, Reception Studies, and Sociology of Literature, demonstrating how digital environments reshape the act of reading and interpretation. Through detailed analyses of four DSR projects centered on major twentieth-century Italian authors—Cesare Pavese, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, and Natalia Ginzburg—this dissertation argues that Twitteratura provides a concrete, data-rich demonstration of Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response …

Measuring Islamic Republic Propaganda In Western Media Coverage Of Iran: A Computational Framework, Leila Habibi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Detecting propaganda is fundamentally difficult: effective propaganda must simultaneously conceal persuasive intent while achieving persuasive effect, which means that sophisticated propagandistic discourse necessarily occupies the ambiguous middle of a rhetorical spectrum rather than its obvious extremes. This thesis defines this property as the dual constraint problem and argues that it poses two challenges for the binary classification framing that dominates propaganda detection in Natural Language Processing (NLP). First, propaganda by definition does not come with clear labels: no propaganda arm willingly accepts the designation, so reliable ground truth does not exist at the source. Second, because the producer is actively …

Semi-Peripheral Whiteness In A Global City: Central And Eastern European Women In Dubai, Hana Rubenstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone examines how Central and Eastern European (CEE) women navigate professional mobility in Dubai and asks to what extent Dubai enables them to bypass the post-socialist stigma attached to their semi-peripheral European identity. Situated at the intersection of migration studies, gender, and critical scholarship on semi-peripheral whiteness, the study addresses the limited attention paid to CEE women as economic actors outside European contexts, where they are often either absorbed into the category of “Western expatriates” or reduced to highly gendered stereotypes. Grounded in a qualitative, interpretivist approach, the study combines digital discourse analysis of 50 publicly accessible LinkedIn profiles …

Hip-Hop Hypocrisy: How Rap Music Culture And Its Lyrical Obsession With Luxury Fashion Compromises Black America, Jeffrey Ampratwum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Black creative thought is often regarded as a secondary means of expression, particularly within a meritocracy like the United States of America. Many Black intellectual thinkers and writers undoubtedly communicated with a style and prose that was widely understood amongst people of the culture. One of these creative communicating styles is the art of hip-hop and the use of language to tell a story. Born out of struggle in the 1970s, this musical derivative from funk, soul, and jazz penetrated the inner city communities and forced the upper class to listen to words from Black artists. Hip-hop initially represented four …

G&P2p: A Multi-Source Approach To Grapheme To Phoneme Conversion, Chun-Yi Peng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis introduces G&P2P, a multi-source framework for grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion that integrates side pronunciations from multiple lexical resources. Unlike traditional single-source approaches, G&P2P fuses data from multi-sourced pronunciation dictionaries—including CELEX, PronLex, NETTalk, and WikiPron—through several fusion strategies. The goal is to improve model performance on out-of-vocabulary words through multi-source learning. Experiments were conducted with attentive LSTM, pointer-generator LSTM, and pointer-generator Transformer architectures. Models were trained on combinations of datasets and evaluated using word error rate (WER) across five random seeds.

Results show that fusing expert-curated dictionaries such as CELEX and PronLex consistently improves accuracy, achieving an 11.81-point absolute error …

An Investigation Of The Impact Of Privacy On Sexual And Reproductive Health Using Reports On The 2010 Earthquake In Haiti, Jillian E. Myers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2010, a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the capital city of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, causing great destruction of infrastructure and the devastating loss of about 316,000 lives and over a million homes. The earthquake destroyed agricultural production and clean water sources, causing severe resource scarcity along with the overcrowding in the relief camps. Following the earthquake, international aid organizations flooded into Haiti in an effort to help provide immediate relief. The relief efforts were unprepared and lacked coordination among each other to efficiently implement the needed aid services. Without strategic planning to ensure all people’s needs are met, women and …

Erosion And Accretion: Mobilities Of Sand, People, And Memory At Queer Riis Beach, Jah Elyse Sayers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York, is a vibrant place of queer and trans public-space placemaking—and especially Black and working class queer and trans placemaking. A distinct queer ecology emerges in the interplay of the dynamic movement of the barrier island, queer and trans—especially queer and trans Afro-diasporic—mobilities. This queer ecology, while articulated with, also defies and exceeds logics and workings of private property. In response to a convergence of pressures on Black, queer, trans, and working-class placemaking on the beach site in the 2020s, beachgoers have mobilized longstanding provisional socialities …

Mapping Nucleosome Stability: Linking Oncogenic Structural Alterations To Long-Range Allosteric Communication, Augustine C. Onyema

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The nucleosome core particle (NCP) is essential for chromatin structure and function, serving as the fundamental unit of eukaryotic chromatin. Oncogenic mutations in core histones disrupt chromatin dynamics, altering DNA repair and transcription processes. How DNA communicates with histones, and how this information propagates through the histone, has been suggested to be a cooperative process. Here, I investigate the molecular consequences of two mutations, H2BE76K and H4R92T, using 36 µs of all-atom molecular dynamics simulations on Anton2. I also characterize the kinetic correlation within histone/DNA domains via conditional activity (CONDACT) using the dihedral angle as our degrees of …

The Exception: Refugee Camps And Governmental Control, Kyle L. Mans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone study examines the relationship between governmental control and the state of exception in refugee camps. This connection is analyzed by examining the control mechanisms employed by the nation state to erode the sovereignty of the individual within a refugee camp space. This study also examines how humanitarian organizations contribute to the perpetuation of the state of exception and how their involvement facilitates further state control. Included in this capstone are two case studies that examine both Libya and Kenya as examples of governmental control on the sovereignty of refugees and migrants. This research contributes to the overall understanding …

Essays On Behavioral Aspects Of Retail Operations, Ceren Gultekin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation combines a structured literature review on availability signaling in retail with two analytical chapters on inventory disclosure. The literature review incorporates the design and key insights of a systematic review and identifies directions for future research. Inventory disclosure is a form of availability signaling through which retailers strategically communicate stock levels to influence consumer buy-now-or-wait decisions. To mitigate strategic purchase deferrals, retailers may share low stock to create urgency or mask high stock to prevent consumers from relying on abundance. Despite its importance for profitability, academic findings and industry practices vary widely, ranging from consistent sharing to consistent …

A Data Analysis Study Of Temperature Based On California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (Calcofi) Data., Afsana Mimi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research presents an integrated analytical framework for predicting ocean temperatures using long-term observations from the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) data files. The study applies advanced data engineering and statistical modeling to assess how a variety of indicators, such as salinity, dissolved oxygen, key nutrients, and ocean depth shape oceanic temperature patterns along the California coastline. Using Microsoft SQL Server software for large-scale data integration and the R for statistical packages (R Core Team, 2025) for statistical computation, I developed and compared multiple regression models, including the ridge regression model, to evaluate the relative influence of physical and …

Theatrical Agency In The Constitution Of Logical Space, Esther Marveta Neff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes advantage of our current moment of collapse and shifting episteme to move from resistance and critique into modes of position, prefiguration, and praxiocentricism, giving not only a critique of the colonial-modern logical space of Theatrum Mundi, but also aiming to configure the thetic consciousness that grounds “theatrical agency” in the logic of cognitive and social epistemological modelling.  In what ways do we “build our own worlds”? What does “theatricality” tell us about human agency, especially in the domain of “theoretical attitudes,” and “consciousness”? In what ways, and to what extent, are we responsible for constituting …

Immunomodulatory And Signaling Molecules From Plant-Associated Bacteria: Toll-Like Receptor 4 Agonist Adjuvants And Diketopiperazine-Mediated Communication, Marian Romaine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Medicinal plants and their associated microbiomes constitute a rich source of bioactive natural products with applications in immunotherapy and microbial ecology. Herbal formulations have long been valued for safe immune enhancement, while bacterial signaling molecules govern community behaviors critical to pathogenesis, symbiosis, and environmental processes. Bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) from plant-associated Gram-negative bacteria have emerged as potent TLR4 agonists, yet their endotoxic potential limits direct use, and diketopiperazines (DKPs) serve as versatile quorum-sensing mediators capable of modulating biofilms in mixed microbial systems.

The work in this thesis comprises two independent but complementary research strands. The first strand pursued the engineering of …

The New Middle Cinema: Aesthetic Restraint, The Urban Middle Class, And The Reconfiguration Of Mainstream Bollywood (2007–2017), Hasnatun Nabi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 2007 and 2017, a distinctive wave of mainstream Hindi films, termed here as the “New Middle Cinema”, employed aesthetic restraint to reconfigure Bollywood’s identity in response to a rapidly changing India. Rejecting the industry’s traditional spectacle, melodrama, and visual opulence, these films embraced naturalistic visuals, grounded performances, character‑driven narratives, and a muted color palette. Drawing on industrial analysis, close textual reading, and audience reception data, this thesis examines seven representative films (Chak De India, Wake Up Sid, My Name is Khan, The Lunchbox, Piku, Kapoor & Sons, and Lipstick Under My Burkha …