Digital Commons Network^™

From Bushwick To Portland: Bori Girls Of The Diaspora Revolutionizing The Puerto Rican Coming-Of-Age Narrative, Lily V. Alvarado

Dissertations and Theses

Trailblazing Puerto Rican women in the diaspora have challenged dominant imagery and fought against patriarchy, U.S. imperialism, and white supremacy through their writing. Writers like Esmeralda Santiago and Nicholasa Mohr have transformed the literary canon via the bildungsroman, highlighting the unique struggles of Boricua girlhood and proving that our stories matter. Two prominent female Boricua writers today, Elisabet Velasquez and Gabby Rivera, have raised the baton that has been passed down to them and revolutionized the Diasporican literary canon. In their respective texts, When We Make It: A Nuyorican Novel and Juliet Takes a Breath, Velasquez and Rivera highlight the …

Complexities Of The Underrecognized: Conceptualizing Erasure And Exposure In Queer Caribbean Narratives, Noemi Saladin

Dissertations and Theses

Queer is not explicitly about homosexuality, it is questioning orientations, identity, and the binary. This work aims to explore the multivalence of erasure and exposure in queer Caribbean narratives, which deconstructs or reconstructs stereotypes, sexuality, and identity. Erasure is defined as the exclusion or suppression of a member of the LGBTQ+ community in history and the present time due to differences in their gender orientation, sexuality, and sexual preference. Exposure allows these suppressed voices to be lifted and rejoiced through inclusivity and awareness. Colonization erased gender diversity in the Caribbean, instilling their Christianity and heteronormative beliefs. Colonization did not only …

Whiteness As The Standard: Shifting Ideologies, Race, And Social Context, Kelsey Swift

Publications and Research

In previous work, I have documented and analyzed the persistence of mainstream ideologies around ’standard’ and ’nonstandard’ American English in the adult ESOL classroom and their connection to linguistic racism and anti-Blackness. This study explores how these ideologies developed more broadly, employing elements of raciolinguistic genealogy and metapragmatics to analyze historical language scholarship. I find that while the linguistic features of ‘nonstandard’ English have remained remarkably consistent in the popular imagination, they became increasingly linked with Blackness, especially during and after white backlash to the Great Migration (and other cultural and political changes) in the mid-20th century. I argue that …

Reflections On Williamson On Logic And Validity, Graham Priest

Publications and Research

Over many years now, Tim Williamson and I have engaged in debates over fundamental issues concerning logic. On some things, we have disagreed strongly; on others, we have agreed.

Criteria For Assessing And Ensuring The Trustworthiness In Qualitative Research, Zia Ul Haq Kakar, Rizwana Rasheed, Aamir Rashid, Salma Akhter

Publications and Research

The trustworthiness of qualitative data has been debatable, yet it has strong support from its supporters. However, the importance and worth of qualitative data cannot be undermined. This paper presents a critical review of the trustworthiness of the qualitative data. The degree of trustworthiness of qualitative research can be measured by ensuring the credibility, transferability, dependability, and conformability of research design, process, and action. The guarantee of trustworthiness in qualitative research is more complex than in quantitative research due to its subjective nature. Many researchers and experts denied the generalizability of qualitative research. However, few researchers, like Guba (1985), developed …

Romancing The University: Bipoc Scholars In Romance Novels In The 1980s And Now, Jayashree Kamble

Publications and Research

English-language mass-market romance novels written by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) writers and starring BIPOC protagonists are a small but important group. This article is a comparative analysis of how recent representations of diversity in this sub-set of the genre, specifically the character of the Black academic and the language of racial justice, compare with the first group of BIPOC novels that were published in 1984 (Sandra Kitt’s Adam and Eva and All Good Things as well as Barbara Stephens’s A Toast to Love). In Adrianna Herrera’s American Love Story (2019), Katrina Jackson’s Office Hours (2020), and …

Connecting With A Lost Heritage: The Indigenous Taino Community Of The Caribbean In New York City, Angeles R. Rodriguez Negron

Capstones

Among New York City's diasporic communities lie the Indigenous Tainos, an aboriginal people originally from the Caribbean region. But many people are unaware of their existence. There is a belief among Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean societies that the Tainos are an extinct tribe since the 16th century due to European colonization. The Taino revivalist movement has taken strength during the last 30 years, and more Taino descendants are taking pride on their identity and culture. After 5 months of collaboration with this Indigenous community, Puerto Rican journalist Ángeles Rodríguez Negrón created Miyari Taino, a podcast designed to provide visibility …

The Role Of Linguistics In Education, Laiba Zia

Publications and Research

This research aims to uncover the critical nuances that shape global learning experiences by delving into multifaceted dynamics of linguistics in education. This investigation includes the analysis of language barriers, preservation efforts, policy challenges and organizational obstacles, illuminating the complex relationship between language and education. A fundamental question guiding this inquiry is how linguistics fundamentally shapes educational landscapes, focusing on understanding the diverse ways language impacts different aspects of education. Using a thorough approach with articles, surveys, and case studies, this research gathers insights from different sources. It delves into the perspectives of final-year medical students, recognizes the role of …

Linguistic Impact On The Use Of The Reliable Digit Span For Performance Validity In A Sample Of English-Spanish Bilingual Adults, Amy Polinsky

Student Theses

Performance validity tests (PVTs) are used alongside neuropsychological assessments to help detect suspect effort. One of the most widely used PVTs, the Reliable Digit Span (RDS), and its latest version, the RDS-revised (RDS-R), have been widely accepted as valid and reliable within the general population. However, as the United States becomes increasingly globalized, questions arise regarding the validity of language-based tests such as the RDS and RDS-R amongst English-Spanish bilingual populations. This study used a within-subject design with 28 bilingual undergraduate students, testing them on the Digit Span (the test that RDS results are based on) in both English and …

Towards Critical Reflexivity In Gifted Education Teacher Preparation, Inna Kruvi

Theses and Dissertations

Ever since the emergence of gifted education in the United States in the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of giftedness has been used to marginalize, segregate, and exclude students of particular backgrounds from specialized academic programs. Among the factors that contribute to unequal access to gifted education for ethnically, culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse (ECLED) students, teacher bias, deficit thinking, and insufficient teacher preparation have been identified as especially significant (Coleman et al., 2015; DeWet & Gubbins, 2011; Mansfield, 2015). Among various approaches to mitigate underrepresentation of ECLED students, the concept of cultural humility (Tervalon and Murray-Garcia, 1998) …

Kripke’S Knowledge Argument Against Materialism, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

In his unpublished 1979 Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind, Saul Kripke offers a knowledge argument against materialism, focusing on deaf people who lack knowledge of auditory experience. Kripke’s argument is a precursor of Frank Jackson’s better-known knowledge argument against materialism (1982). The paper sets out Kripke’s argument, brings out its interest and philosophical importance, and explores some similarities and differences between Kripke’s knowledge argument and Jackson’s.

Balanced Blended Space: Proposing A Universal Theoretical Framework For Combinative Reality, David Smith, Frederick Bianchi

Publications and Research

In today's fragmented societies, a unified framework for communication and collaboration across different realities is crucial. We introduce Balanced Blended Space (BBS) as a framework for describing combinative reality, encompassing virtual, physical, and conceptual realms, all intrinsically connected. Interactions within these environments shape our perceptual space. This paper outlines key axiomatic assumptions, criteria for a universal framework, and fundamental terminology. We identify deep symmetries enabling the BBS framework, including Cognitive and Computational Symmetry, Physical and Virtual Symmetry, Mediation Pathway Symmetry, Space-Time Symmetry, and Sensory Symmetry. We propose tests to determine its viability, emphasizing virtual intelligence as a collaborative partner. We …

Impact Of Sex In Luxury Fashion Advertisements On Brand Attractiveness And Identification, Alyssa Dana Dana Adomaitis, Diana Saiki, Juan Del Pozo Severino

Publications and Research

Purpose

This study examined perceived brand attractiveness of and identification with fashion luxury brands given different levels of sexuality in advertisements. Sex in advertisements has become increasingly more common to generate attention and interest in fashion luxury products, with limited research on its influence on the consumer. However, the use of sexuality in luxury advertisements may counter the ethical expectations of brands by the current consumer in the United States.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of 1,266 males and females completed a survey on brand attractiveness and identification after examining an advertisement of a luxury fashion product. Participants were assigned an advertisement …

Collect Cosmic Dust, Make It Into Bright Stars: The Use Of Temporal Data In Regeneration Of Life Space And Time Via A Construction Of The Political-Sociological Theory Of Justice, Yi Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues for an argument-counterargument approach to the atypical classics of Franz Kafka and Emily Dickinson. This approach to the literature is useful for a construction of the political-sociological theory of justice, which claims that the state of a just world is each individual’s lifetime moving in a dialectic-of-anti-violence-and-non-violence manner.

Posthuman Lessons For Writing And Well-Being: Reparative Practices, Anna A. Larsson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The influence of post-humanist interdisciplinary theories on Writing Studies has displaced its conventional preoccupation with the cultivation and management of subjects via First-Year Writing (FYC), to productive but at times artificially divisive ends. This project aims at an inclusive, anti-racist first-year writing ecology through theories of networked consciousness and digital “making.” I reread and recuperate earlier variants of posthumanist writing theory and draw from feminist materialism and mindfulness studies to establish a vision of well-being that I call networked reparative practices. To bring the abstract into the tangible, an often-valued endeavor in a field historically defined by teaching, I introduce …

Doc/U/Ment: Affinities In 20th And 21st-Century Documental Poetics, Katherine Payne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents, analyzes, and builds on the existing literary genealogy of documental poetry. In 2020 Michael Leong proposed the term documental poetry to describe the turn toward source materials in 21^st-century North American poetry, seen in longform research-based poems that explicitly incorporate documentation and seek to intervene in cultural memory. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, I argue that there are clear affinities between 21^st-century poets and their 20^th-century literary forerunners, also that an expansion of the scope of documental poetics is needed. The three nodes of connection I examine are works …

Completive 'Todo': Implications For Possessives, Existentials, And Locative Expressions, Carolina Fraga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Spanish, the element todo ‘all’ agrees in gender and number with the noun it quantifies over (todas las ventanas ‘all.F.PL the.F.PL windows.F.PL’). In this work I discuss a novel construction in Rioplatense Spanish, restricted to existentials and possessives, in which todo agrees in gender and number with a given nominal in the structure but is neither syntactically nor semantically related to it (e.g., Hay toda agua en el baño (have.PRS all.F.SG water.F.SG in the bathroom) ‘There’s water over the whole bathroom floor’). I argue that the syntax and the …

Regulating The Care Boom: Labor Standards Enforcement And Paid In-Home Care Work, Isaac Jabola-Carolus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States, population aging has driven explosive growth in care-sector occupations, especially among low-wage home care aides who provide long-term assistance to older adults. These aides, predominantly women and disproportionately people of color, now represent one of the country’s largest and fastest-growing occupational groups. In recent decades, economic inequality and meager social policies have also spurred demand for nannies, housecleaners, and other domestic workers—occupations heavily reliant on immigrant women, many undocumented. While scholarly and public discourse has addressed labor shortages and job quality in such occupations, a related problem is the widespread violation of labor standards, including minimum …

Icons In Lyari: Resonance, Visibility, And Global Blackness In An Indian Ocean Port Town, Zehra Husain

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This doctoral dissertation studies the resonances of boxing, football, and rap music in Lyari Town, a working-class neighborhood located in Pakistan’s commercial port city Karachi. Based on 12 months of in-person and remote ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation traces the circulation of iconographies of Blackness and global sports as they sediment in a port town on the Indian Ocean. Lyari has long been in the news for gang violence and urban strife, but is also noted for its talented boxers, footballers and more recently rap musicians, some of whom are of Afro-Baluch descent. These “two faces” of Lyari Town informs its …

Towards Interpretable Machine Reading Comprehension With Mixed Effects Regression And Exploratory Prompt Analysis, Luca Del Signore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We investigate the properties of natural language prompts that determine their difficulty in machine reading comprehension tasks. While much work has been done benchmarking language model performance at the task level, there is considerably less literature focused on how individual task items can contribute to interpretable evaluations of natural language understanding. Such work is essential to deepening our understanding of language models and ensuring their responsible use as a key tool in human machine communication. We perform an in depth mixed effects analysis on the behavior of three major generative language models, comparing their performance on a large reading comprehension …

Demarcating Psychopathologies: Nosology, Validity, And The Taxonomic Problem In Psychiatric Medicine, Julia Zentz Kolak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I argue that the discussion surrounding the role of values in the conceptualization of mental disorders is reproduced in critical debates surrounding the issue of reliability and validity in a psychiatric nosology. In so doing, I oppose the conventional separation of the demarcation problem and the crisis of validity in psychiatric classification, arguing instead that they are inextricably linked. After drawing out the intersection between these literatures in the conceptual history of the DSM and its much-maligned transition to an etiologically neutral taxonomy of mental disorders, I consider Carl Hempel’s proposed conciliation between descriptive and theoretical systematization …

Sonorous Movement: Cellistic Corporealities In Works By Helmut Lachenmann, Simon Steen-Andersen, And Johan Svensson, John Popham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Sonorous Movement: Cellistic Corporealities in Works by Lachenmann, Steen-Andersen, and Svensson, I analyze three compositions that foreground the cellist-body, its physical gestures, and instrumental interactions: Helmut Lachemann’s Pression für einen Cellisten (1969/2010), Simon Steen-Andersen’s Study for String Instrument #3 (2011), and Johan Svensson’s marionette for string instrument, electro-mechanical devices and lights (2018). These works center sound production and the performing body as sites of ontological and creative exploration. Their physical gestures serve multiple sensorial functions, heightening the visual and kinesthetic dimensions of a traditionally aurally oriented practice. For each work, I develop a corresponding analytical method based on …

Flamboyant Abundance: Performing Queer Maximalism, 1960–1990, Jack Owen Crawford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation theorizes “queer maximalism” as an aesthetic of unmitigated flamboyance and voracious drag that appears in a constellation of performance-based artistic practices in the postwar United States. Queer maximalism brings together a historically grounded group of performers primarily based in New York City who have been variously described as theatrical, baroque, and Ridiculous and repositions them within an art-historical frame. Identifying drag and pastiche as central to queer maximalism, I show how artists salvage, assemble, and re-signify pop-cultural imagery, inflecting it with camp in order to fashion intimate community and openly flout societal norms of gender, race, and sexuality. …

"How" As A Signal Of An Invariant Meaning, Andrew S. Mccormick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explain why speakers and writers use how in the communicative contexts in which they do, and its central claim is that how is a signal of one invariant meaning. The form’s diverse communicative contributions can be explained by hypothesizing a single meaning that contributes to different message effects, or contextual interpretations, on different occasions of its use.

The present analysis rests on the crucial distinction in Columbia School (CS) linguistics, the theoretical framework guiding this project, between meaning and message. A meaning is a signal’s invariant semantic contribution, while messages are the context-unique interpretations that …

Ways Of Silence And Other Absences In The Music Of George Crumb, Jean-Patrick Besingrand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The music of American composer George Crumb (1929-2022) is undeniably singular in the musical landscape. His aesthetic is often characterized by his exploration of timbre, his graphic scores, his use of quotation, his theatricality, and his interest in unusual instruments. This study proposes to take a different approach to Crumb’s aesthetic through the spectrum of silences and other absences. The concept of silence will be broken down and reconstructed through the Japanese concept of ma (間) and of empty spaces. Multiple types of silences and absences will be considered throughout this dissertation, expanding thus the concept of silence not only …

Learning To Fly While Staying Grounded: How Forcibly Displaced Individuals Develop A Sense Of Belonging In Disempowered Cities, Janina L. Selzer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite a growing interest in belonging, immigration and urban scholarship has yet to develop an empirically grounded, spatially sensitive, and complex theorization of the concept itself. Drawing on a comparative case study of two disempowered cities – Bielefeld, Germany, and Detroit, US, – this dissertation analyzes how and to what extent forcibly displaced Yazidi and Chaldean Iraqis develop a sense of belonging. By triangulating data from semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations, as well as a discourse analysis of policy documents, the following pages trace how politics of belonging are continuously produced, reproduced, and challenged through a spatially mediated and often contradictory …

Recursive Functional Learning In Nonfluent Aphasia, Gerald C. Imaezue

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

People with nonfluent aphasia (PWNA) require feedback from an external agent as well self-feedback to facilitate performance of language production tasks. The extent to which PWNA can use self-feedback alone to improve their task performance is unknown. In addition, it is argued that self-feedback may reinforce or minimize performance errors over time. To test whether either is the case, we introduce an original learning mechanism, recursive functional learning, which uses self-feedback loops to optimize recursively multiple subsystems (cognitive and linguistic subsystems) that PWNA engage during task performance. We used this mechanism to underpin a novel automated procedure we developed, recursive …

Hypo-Cathexis And Impotence In The Facilitating Environment Of The Anthropocene: Towards Digital Humanities, Brian W. Millen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is an attempt to understand why there does not seem to be enough will to take proper action in light of the information we have about the destructive effects of the Anthropocene, in particular: climate change and the destruction of biodiversity. It is an attempt to follow the injunctions of French philosopher Bernard Stiegler to re-examine and re-evaluate knowledge in terms of the primary role of technics in human experience, and to preliminarily situate the digital humanities within such a project. In this paper, I investigate Sigmund Freud's concepts of cathexis, decathexis, and hyper-cathexis as psychic mechanisms whereby …

Settling Into Inequality: Resettled Afghans In The Washington Dc Metro Area, Harry Frey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August of 2021, nearly 90,000 Afghans who had fled their country have been resettled in the United States, constituting one of the largest groups of refugee arrivals in the U.S. in recent history. Working from a database I created from the administrative records of a non-profit refugee aid group, I use data and spatial analysis to examine the demographics of Afghans resettled in the DC metro area, the characteristics of the census tracts and counties in which they have been resettled, and their access to public transportation. I find that the …

Fifteenth-Century Sienese Art In Its International Setting: A Case Study Of Cross-Cultural Exchange In Italy And Beyond, Maria Lucca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars often frame the Republic of Siena as isolationist and inward-looking, yet from its beginning in 1262 the city-state was internationally vital, sending artists to work in foreign cities and calling upon foreign artists to do significant work in Siena. Although Siena temporarily retreated from this internationalism to a period of relative cultural autonomy in the mid-Trecento, in the early Quattrocento it re-opened the gates of its medieval walled city to artistic interchange between Sienese and Florentine sculptors, setting in motion the dramatic shift that occurred in the mid-Quattrocento. Sienese sculptors embraced the Renaissance artistic humanism flourishing in Florence and …