Digital Commons Network^™

Little Siberia, Star Of The North: Prisons, Crisis, And Development In Rural New York, 1968–1994, Jack Norton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is a study of how prisons became a common sense solution to economic and social decline in northern New York in the 1980s, about how prisons became synonymous with development in rural counties in the long wake of New York City’s fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s. The United States imprisons more people per capita than any other nation-state on earth. The number of U.S. prisoners has increased nearly six fold since 1970 and there are now over 2.25 million people incarcerated across the country. Accompanying and encouraging this rise in the prison population was an expansion of the prisons …

Constructing Social Identity Through The Past: The Itza Maya Community Identity Through The Late Postclassic Period (1250–1525ce), Yuko Shiratori

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the construction of social identity of the Itza Maya during the Late Postclassic period (1400-1525 CE) at Tayasal in the Petén lakes region, Guatemala. The Itza were the last indigenous group conquered by the Spaniards in the Americas in 1697. Various ethnohistorical documents describe the people and socio-political organization of the Itza during sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Avendaño y Loyola 1987; Edmonson 1982, 1986; Jones 1998; López de Cogolludo 1971; Roys 1967; Villagutierre Soto-Mayo 1983). According to the documents, the Itza of the Petén claimed to have migrated from the great city of Chich'en Itza in …

Bridging The Research/Teaching Divide With Dah And Sotl-Ah, Renee Mcgarry, Virginia B. Spivey Phd

Publications and Research

This paper explores the potential for rigorous pedagogical scholarship to complement developments in digital art history (DAH). In addition to introducing ideas and methods that characterize scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) in higher education, we focus on two major themes: how digital tools and techniques can support robust scholarship of teaching and learning in art history (SoTL-AH) and ways that SoTL-AH can be used to evaluate and demonstrate the impact of DAH projects in the classroom and the public realm. Our goal is to encourage greater exchange between these two emerging fields that can together advance art historical study.

Geoarchaeological Evidence Of Middle-Age Tsunamis At Stromboli And Consequences For The Tsunami Hazard In The Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, M. Rosi, S. T. Levi, M. Pistolesi, A. Bertagnini, D. Brunelli, V. Cannavo, A. Di Renzoni, F. Ferranti, A. Renzulli, D. Yoon

Publications and Research

Large-scale landslides at volcanic islands are one of the most dangerous geological phenomena, able to generate tsunamis whose effects can propagate far from the source. However, related deposits are scarcely preserved on-land in the geologic records, and are often difficult to be interpreted. Here we show the discovery of three unprecedented well-preserved tsunami deposits related to repeated flank collapses of the volcanic island of Stromboli (Southern Italy) occurred during the Late Middle Ages. Based on carbon datings, on stratigraphic, volcanological and archaeological evidence, we link the oldest, highest-magnitude investigated tsunami to the following rapid abandonment of the island which was …

Yay Or Neigh? Frederic Remington’S Bronco Buster, Public Art, And Socially-Engaged Art History Pedagogy, Jennifer Borland, Louise Siddons

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

This article outlines a collaborative, community-based project developed for two undergraduate art history courses at a large state university. The exercise focused on Frederic Remington’s 1894-95 sculpture, the Bronco Buster, a large bronze image of a cowboy whipping a bucking bronco with the goal of taming it. An enlarged replica of Remington’s sculpture was installed recently in the downtown district of this university town, raising questions about how it was selected and funded, as well as what message the sculpture sent about the town to its visitors. As we discussed our frustration with both the iconography and the selection …

Multisensory And Active Learning Approaches To Teaching Medieval Art, Marice Rose, Tera Lee Hedrick

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

In this article, two professors share methods and examples of active learning in order to teach Western European and Byzantine medieval art through a multisensory lens. The course content and pedagogy are situated in the “sensory turn,” a conceptual and methodological approach that began in anthropology and has transformed medieval art historical scholarship in recent years. The discipline of art history has traditionally focused on the visual impact of objects and monuments, but the sensory turn has prompted art historians and architectural historians to investigate how art objects and monuments engage all five senses, transforming the “period eye” into the …

A Didactic Teaching And Learning Project In Art Market Research. Researching And Publishing The History Of Commercial Art Dealing, Nadine Oberste-Hetbleck

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

In addition to research, one of the main tasks of art historians is the authoring of academically and stylistically sound texts in differing genres. This case study of the research and publishing project Zur Geschichte des Düsseldorfer Kunsthandels (A History of Commercial Art Dealing in Düsseldorf) will demonstrate how research and writing can be integrated into teaching. The project involved supervised work with source materials, data visualization, semi-structured interviews (oral history), a supplementary writing workshop, as well as detailed feedback from a writing instructor, the teacher, and fellow participants in the seminar. In addition, the high practical relevance of the …

Measurement Plan And Analytic Strategies For Evaluating The Mayor’S Action Plan For Neighborhood Safety. Map Evaluation Update Number 2., Jeffrey A. Butts, John Roman, Angela Silletti, Anthony Vega, Wogod Alawlaqi

Publications and Research

This is the second of six updates presenting interim findings from the evaluation of the NYC Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP). As part of an evaluation of the New York City Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), the John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center was asked to create the measurement framework and analytic strategies to evaluate the MAP initiative. Using multiple data sources and onsite observations and interviews, the team aims to understand the relationship between the MAP efforts and the expected outcomes of those efforts.

Reconstructing The Demographic History Of The Critically Endangered Black-And-White Ruffed Lemur (Varecia Variegata) In Ranomafana National Park, Aparna Chandrashekar

Theses and Dissertations

Due to heavy fragmentation of their remaining range, the Critically Endangered black-and-white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata) is facing catastrophic population declines. Skyline analyses at Ranomafana National Park show the ruffed lemur effective population size declining by 84% starting around 1,500 years ago.

Hrísheimar: Fish Consumption Patterns, Wendi K. Coleman

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I examine the fish remain patterns at Hrísheimar, which have provided archaeologists with further evidence that inland sites such as those in the Mývatnssveit Region utilized both local freshwater and marine fish from the coastal regions as a part of their subsistence pattern.

Choutouts: Language Contact And Us-Latin Hip Hop On Youtube, Matt Garley

Publications and Research

This paper presents a corpus-sociolinguistic analysis of lyrics and com-ments from videos for four US-Latinx hip hop songs on YouTube. A‘post-varieties’ (Seargeant and Tagg 2011) analysis of the diversity andhybridity of linguistic production in the YouTube comments finds thenotions of codemeshing and plurilingualism (Canagarajah 2009) usefulin characterizing the language practices of the Chicanx community ofthe Southwestern US, while a focus on the linguistic practices of com-menters on Northeastern ‘core’ artists’ tracks validate the use of namedlanguage varieties in examining language attitudes and ideologies asthey emerge in commenters’ discussions. Finally, this article advancesthe sociolinguistics of orthography (Sebba 2007) by examining thesocial …

The Ballot Box: A Pathway To Greater Success In Addressing Political Gerrymandering Through State Courts, Taylor Larson, Joshua A. Duden

City University of New York Law Review

This article will accomplish two tasks. First, it will address how political gerrymandering presents a hybrid-question for courts—a political and a constitutional question grounded in the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Second, this article will discuss two diverging challenges: the first being the federal challenges under the United States Constitution in Gill v. Whitford and Benisek v. Lamone, and the second being the Pennsylvania state constitutional challenge in League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. Ultimately, this article seeks to provide a roadmap for successful challenges to political gerrymandering. Although federal remedies appear limited, this article argues that gerrymandering can be successfully …

Accidents Happen: Exposing Fallacies In Child Protection Abuse Cases And Reuniting Families Through Aggressive Litigation, Jessica Horan-Block, Elizabeth Tuttle Newman

City University of New York Law Review

The mere existence of a fracture, head trauma, or other serious injury in a young child or infant that cannot be explained, even without additional evidence of an intentional act, can trigger civil child abuse allegations, tear apart a family, and stigmatize a parent as an “abuser.” This article explores litigation strategies within serious physical abuse cases, the proportionally smaller category of child protective cases in which ACS is often seen to be most justified in removing and separating children from their families. Though these cases often seem daunting, effective litigation exposes that even unexplained serious injuries are often not …

Crossing Borders In Business And Economics Classrooms: Implementing Telecollaboration To Advance Diversity And 21st Century Skills, Marta Fondo, Schiro Withanachchi

Publications and Research

The emerging changes in global societies challenge businesses as teams work across borders. Consequently, higher education promotes student interaction from diverse cultural backgrounds using technological tools without restricting time, cost, motivation or mobility. In this regard, telecollaboration engages students in a learning process that develops 21st century skills with peers from diverse language, socio-cultural, and educational backgrounds. This article presents a telecollaboration project designed and implemented by Queens College, City University of New York, and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, an online university in Barcelona, in which 196 Economics and Business undergraduate students from the United States and Mexico enhanced intercultural …

Developing A Culturally Responsive Assessment Model For Short-Term Study Abroad At An Urban Community College, Grace Pai, Katie Wilson

Publications and Research

The literature on assessing education abroad is dominated by studies using pre-/post-survey instruments to measure student growth across broad dimensions like global perspectives or intercultural competencies. Most studies also focus on study abroad programs in private, four-year or graduate schools. There is limited research assessing programs in community colleges serving underrepresented students, despite the increasing diversity of education abroad participants. This article addresses that gap, and even more important, illustrates the process of how an urban, Minority Serving Institution-designated community college designed a culturally responsive assessment framework—one that that combines quantitative analysis of surveys with qualitative analysis of student e-Portfolios— …

Stewarding The City As Commons: Parks Conservancies And Community Land Trusts, John Krinsky, Paula Z. Segal

City University of New York Law Review

Urban land is one of the commons most in danger of enclosure in the present era. “Commons” emerge out of and are enacted through sustained patterns of local use, through collective actions that give life to and re-assign the roles of spaces, and through individual investments of time, love, and energy. Creating commons—or commoning—makes place out of space, while asserting the “right to not be excluded” from the use of that place.

Commoners have a right to be part of the decision-making for the distribution of shared assets. Management of commons should be voluntary, adaptive, inclusive, and available to all. …

Separating Families Without Due Process: Hidden Child Removals Closer To Home, Wendy Jennings

City University of New York Law Review

Americans across the political spectrum protested in response to the United States government’s family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018. The everyday family separations that occur in the U.S. child welfare system go unnoticed by many, however. This Note examines the lack of due process, the injustice, and the trauma caused by the child welfare system, focusing specifically on the common practice of removing children from their parents while home on “trial discharge,” when families reunite after children were in foster care. After reviewing the harm caused when children are removed from their parents, this Note explains the …

Limited Access Letters: How New York City Schools Illegally Ban “Unruly” Parents Of Color And Parents Of Students With Disabilities, Andrew Gerst

City University of New York Law Review

Parents of color and parents of students with disabilities appear to face disproportionate levels of exclusion from their children's school campus. With little to no due process, New York City public schools have begun to use "limited access letters" to ban allegedly "disruptive" parents from school grounds. These letters may restrict a parent from entering the building without calling the principal ahead of time or impose other burdens. The city keeps no formal data on these letters, a cause for concern. The New York City Department of Education's Chancellor's Regulations also do not seem to address the practice. This Article …

Janus V Afscme, Council 31: Judges Will Haunt You In The Second Gilded Age, William A. Herbert

Publications and Research

The United States Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 reversed four decades of precedent by holding that a stat tory or a negotiated agency shop in public sector labour relations is unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This essay, published in Relations Industrielles / Industrial Relations places the Janus decision in historical and legal context, describe the judicial activism underlying the decision, and review measures being taken by unions and state legislatures to minimize the decision’s adverse impact

Snowmelt Detection On Alpine Glaciers Using Synthetic Aperture Radar Time Series, Corey Scher

Dissertations and Theses

Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) glaciers serve as some of the most sensitive indicators of changes in global climate. These glaciers shape the hydrologic dynamics of river systems supplying freshwater to over 2 billion people throughout Asia and regulate the geochemistry of sensitive aquatic alpine ecosystems. As snowmelt onsets sooner, lasts longer, and snowfields retreat due to increases in global temperature, the hydrologic dynamics of catchments draining HKH threaten to change the availability of surface freshwater resources for nearly one fifth of the global population, disturb sensitive aquatic habitat, and precipitate hazards associated with glacier wasting. Informed planning and decision-making around …

"Dawn And Doom Was In The Branches": Eros Revisited In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Fernando M. Duran

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Mediterranean Crisis, Zuzana Turakova

Dissertations and Theses

A massive European immigration crisis began in 2015, resulting in over a million people flooding into Europe, fleeing conflict and economic desperation. European countries felt threatened by this sudden influx of people who either looked different or practiced different religions, and this caused a major backlash in these predominantly Christian countries. Anti-immigrant fever has changed the political environment in Europe and as a result, most EU policies today focus on preventing migrants from reaching European borders. In this thesis, I argue that the paucity of knowledge and lack of preliminary communication and pre-warning on the scale of the Mediterranean crisis …

Senegal’S Unsustainable Economic Growth., Amadou Konteye

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Understanding And Modeling Taxi Demand Using Time Series Models, Sabiheh Faghih

Dissertations and Theses

The spatio-temporal variations in demand for transportation, particularly taxis, are impacted by various factors such as commuting, weather, road work and closures, disruption in transit services, etc. Identifying the factors that influence taxi demand and understanding its dynamic provide planners with the information necessary to improve the transportation systems and also help drivers to reduce their vacant time.

This dissertation focuses on important factors affecting the demand. In the beginning, the impact of price changes on the demand is studied. Chapter One discusses how the seasonal effects and trends are removed from the demand, and then price elasticity for demand …

Critical Participatory Action Research: A Feminist Project For Validity And Solidarity, Michelle Fine, María Elena Torre

Publications and Research

We present critical participatory action research as an enactment of feminist research praxis in psychology. We discuss the key elements of critical participatory action research through the story of a single national participatory project. The project was designed by and for LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, plus) and gender expansive youth; it was called What’s Your Issue? We provide details of the research project, the dreams, desires, experiences, and structural precarity of queer and trans youth. We write this paper hoping readers will appreciate the complexities of identities; attend to the relentless commitment to recognition and solidarities; …

Public Land Revisited: Municipalization And Privatization In Newark And New York City, Samuel Stein, Oksana Mironova

Publications and Research

Public land plays a central role in contemporary urban planning struggles. Using a comparative case study approach focused on the north-eastern US cities of Newark and New York City, we uncover patterns of land acquisition and dispossession that fit five broad and often overlapping periods in planning history: City Beautiful, metropolitan reorganization, deindustrialization, and devaluation, followed by hyper-commodification in New York City and redevelopment amidst disinvestment in Newark. Through this periodization, we find that accumulation and alienation of urban public land has largely taken place through two modes of municipalization (targeted and reactive) and two modes of privatization (community-led and …

Using Physical Contact Heterogeneity And Frequency To Characterize Dynamics Of Human Exposure To Nonhuman Primate Bodily Fluids In Central Africa, Victor Narat, Mamdou Kampo, Thibut Heyer, Stephanie Rupp, Philippe Ambata, Richard Njouom, Tamara Giles-Vernick

Publications and Research

Emerging infectious diseases of zoonotic origin constitute a recurrent threat to global health. Nonhuman primates (NHPs) occupy an important place in zoonotic spillovers (pathogenic transmissions from animals to humans), serving as reservoirs or amplifiers of multiple neglected tropical diseases, including viral hemorrhagic fevers and arboviruses, parasites and bacteria, as well as retroviruses (simian foamy virus, PTLV) that are pathogenic in human beings. Hunting and butchering studies in Africa characterize at-risk human social groups, but overlook critical factors of contact heterogeneity and frequency, NHP species differences, and meat processing practices. In southeastern Cameroon, a region with a history of zoonotic emergence …

Understanding Urbanization: A Study Of Census And Satellite-Derived Urban Classes In The United States, 1990-2010, Deborah Balk, Stefan Leyk, Bryan Jones, Mark R. Montgomery, Anastasia Clark

Publications and Research

Most of future population growth will take place in the world’s cities and towns. Yet, there is no well-established, consistent way to measure either urban land or people. Even censusbased urban concepts and measures undergo frequent revision, impeding rigorous comparisons over time and place. This study presents a new spatial approach to derive consistent urban proxies for the US. It compares census-designated urban blocks with proxies for landbased classifications of built-up areas derived from time-series of the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) for 1990–2010. This comparison provides a new way to understand urban structure and its changes: Most land that …

But Are They Actually Healthier? Challenging The Health/Wellness Divide Through The Ethnography Of Embodied Ecological Heritage, Kristina Baines

Publications and Research

A holistic definition of ‘health’ remains difficult to operationalize, despite decades of attempts by medical anthropologists and the World Health Organization to do so. Anthropologists routinely reject dichotomous notions – belief vs. knowledge, wellness vs. health, mental vs. physical, environment vs. self – yet demands for physiological evidence of ‘health’ persist. In this article, I ask what evidence would sufficiently demonstrate health, and explore the possibility of measures that move beyond the physiological. Using ethnographic data collected in indigenous Maya communities in Belize and in immigrant communities in New York City, I argue that ecological heritage practices can provide a …

Open Source Foundations For Spatial Decision Support Systems, Jochen Albrecht

Publications and Research

Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) were a hot topic in the 1990s, when researchers tried to imbue GIS with additional decision support features. Successful practical developments such as HAZUS or CommunityViz have since been built, based on commercial desktop software and without much heed for theory other than what underlies their process models. Others, like UrbanSim, have been completely overhauled twice but without much external scrutiny. Both the practical and the theoretical foundations of decision support systems have developed considerably over the past 20 years. This article presents an overview of these developments and then looks at what corresponding tools …