Digital Commons Network^™

Lang 201: Language In A Multicultural Setting, Cuny School Of Professional Studies

Open Educational Resources

Introduces the foundations of linguistics and language acquisition. Analyzes language in multicultural American urban settings. Critiques bilingual/bidialectal families and bilingual education; language and gender; literacy in a changing, technological society; and different dialects and registers of American English. Appraises recent and classic scholarship in linguistics, literature, and related fields. Requires reflection and analysis of personal linguistic experiences and backgrounds.

Eng 101: College Writing I, Cuny School Of Professional Studies

Open Educational Resources

Practice in expository and analytical writing through reading and research-based assignments in varied academic formats such as reports, formal essays and research papers, making use of appropriate technology for composing, editing and sharing documents. Practice in conventions of academic reading and writing including clear and coherent use of standard English, use of digital libraries, and methods of ethical attribution and citation.

Spn 11x: Spanish For Healthcare Professionals I, Francisco Salgado-Robles

Open Educational Resources

This course has been specifically designed to meet the needs of students in the health professions. It is one of the first courses anywhere in the country to interweave culture, language instruction, and health care material. As such, students will be performing a variety of exercises and activities designed to strengthen each of these areas.

On The Future Of Ijsl: Trans-Collaboration And How To Overcome The Structural Constraints On Knowledge Production, Distribution And Dissemination, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

In this essay, using as a point of departure his dilemma to accept or not the invitation to be a member of IJSL’s Editorial Board, del Valle discusses the limitations that academic publishing places on scholars in the humanities and interpretive social sciences: their choice of objects and analytical protocols, and the modes of distribution and dissemination of their production. The constraints imposed by highly bureaucratized universities and publishing companies are set against the intellectual imperative to build academic fields grounded in equality and inclusion. The essay concludes with some thinly drawn goals towards more dynamic trans-collaborative forms of knowledge …

Bibliodiversity At The Centre: Decolonizing Open Access, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

The promise of open access for the global South has not been fully met. Publishing is dominated by Northern publishers who disadvantage Southern authors through platform capitalism and open access models requiring article processing charges to publish. The South can reclaim and decolonize open access, nurturing scholarly communities, by employing bibliodiversity, a sustainable, anticolonial ethos and practice developed in Latin America. Self-determination and locality are at the core of bibliodiversity which rejects the domination of international, English-language journal publishing. As articulated by the Jussieu Call, varied scholarly community-based, non-profit, and sustainable models for open access are integral to bibliodiversity as …

Women In Public Administration In The United States: Leadership, Gender Stereotypes, And Bias, Sofia Calsy, Maria J. D’Agostino

Publications and Research

In the public and private sectors, women continue to address multiple hurdles despite diversity and equity initiatives. Women have made tremendous strides in the workforce but are still a minority in leadership positions worldwide in multiple sectors, including nonprofit, corporate, government, medicine, education, military, and religion. In the United States women represent 60% of bachelor’s degrees earned at universities and outpace men in master’s and doctoral programs. However, a significant body of research illustrates that women’s upward mobility has been concentrated in middle management positions. Women hold 52% of all management and professional roles in the U.S. job market, including …

Spe-29 - Voice & Articulation (Intro Assignment), Laura Spinu

Open Educational Resources

This assignment is asking students to collaboratively create a database of "good" and "bad" voices for subsequent analysis.

Spe-41 - Language Development (Intro Assignment), Laura Spinu

Open Educational Resources

This assignment is asking students to collaboratively create a database with videos illustrating differences in the speech production of young children compared to that of adults.

Spe-29 - Voice & Articulation (Advanced Assignment), Laura Spinu

Open Educational Resources

This two-part assignment introduces students to spectrogram reading by asking them (1) to explore a set of spectrograms representing the days of the week, and then (2) record their own spectrogram and add a picture of it to a common "Mystery Spectrograms" folder for use in a subsequent assignment (and also in classroom activities).

NOTE: by the time this assignment is introduced, the students have already learned how to record themselves and save sound files using the Praat software for acoustic analysis. If they are not familiar with the procedure, this tutorial will help:

Making a recording in PRAAT

Using Verb Extension To Gauge Children’S Verb Meaning Construals: The Case Of Chinese, Weiyi Ma, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Lulu Song, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

Publications and Research

Verb extension is a crucial gauge of the acquisition of verb meaning. In English, studies suggest that young children show conservative extension. An important test of whether an early conservative extension is a general phenomenon or a function of the input language is made possible by Chinese, a language in which verbs are more frequent and acquired earlier. This study tested whether 3-year-old Chinese children extended a group of familiar verbs that specify various ways to carry objects. Shown videos that portrayed typical, mid-typical, or atypical carrying actions (as verified by Chinese adults), children were asked to judge whether they …

Understanding The Roles Of Public Libraries And Digital Exclusion Through Critical Race Theory: An Exploratory Study Of People Of Color In California Affected By The Digital Divide And The Pandemic, Raymond Pun

Urban Library Journal

With the arrival of COVID-19, public libraries have been closed or partially re-opened in various phases. This qualitative study explores the lived experiences of select library users in California, particularly people of color who experience digital exclusion, and how they use their public libraries prior to and during the pandemic. The study is guided by two research questions: 1. What are the barriers in using public libraries’ technology resources experienced by patrons of color before and during the pandemic? 2. What are their perspectives, purposes, and beliefs in using technologies in the public library before and during the pandemic? Using …

Making Sense Of Researcher Positionality In Foundational Literacy Studies Research, Amy J. Wan

Publications and Research

This article is an examination of researcher positionality in literacy studies research through a historiographical study of Brian Street.

Reimagining Post-Secondary Training, Community College, And Welfare Supports, Aaron Azerad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to study the income patterns at the sub-bachelorette level through community colleges and workforce training programs. Using 2018 U.S. Census PUMA microdata, this thesis not only explores which fields of study, industries, and occupations have a sufficient number of observations to determine whether they provide incomes which are commensurate with a middle class livelihood but, also whether these jobs are plentiful in number.

The second goal is to evaluate the effects of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (the Clinton era welfare reform) and how it has influenced Giuliani era ‘work requirement’ initiatives tied …

Spilling The Tea In Bilingual Latinx New York City Department Of Education School Social Workers: Towards Entre Nos, Cindy M. Bautista-Thomas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social workers play an important role in schools. There are about one million children enrolled in the New York City Department of Education(NYCDOE) school system, across 1,843 schools (New York City Department of Education, 2020). Of those students, the largest demographic group is the Latinx population, which has been increasing steadily since 2011. Therefore, there is an urgent need not only to increase the numbers of culturally responsive bilingual Latinx social workers, but also to understand their professional experiences. In order to address this gap in knowledge, the roles of bilingual Latinx school social workers as culturally responsive practitioners in …

Eece 767: English Language Learning In The Bilingual Classroom: Pedagogical Applications, Demet Arpacik

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

The Non-Uniformity Of Chinese Wh-Indefinites Through The Lens Of Algebraic Structure, Zhuo Chen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the non-uniformity of Chinese wh-indefinites. The different algebraic structures associated with the different wh-indefinites are shown to play a signif- icant role in determining their possible readings. Specifically, those wh-indefinites that are associated with an unordered algebraic structure can give rise to an epistemic reading in both positive and negative sentences. Those wh-indefinites that are associated with a structure of total ordering never have an epistemic reading. They have an existential reading in posi- tive sentences and generate an insignificance reading under a clausemate negation. Shenme ‘what’ is a special in that it straddles both types of …

New Chinese Music In New York City: From Revival To Musical Transnationalism, Serena Yiai Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Pulitzer Prize (2011, Zhou Long’s Madame White Snake), a Metropolitan opera commission (Tan Dun’s The First Emperor, premiered 2006), and the Ives Living Award (Chen Yi, 2001) are just some of the high-profile awards and commission bestowed upon Chinese émigré composers who have studied and built their professional reputation in New York City. The works of Chinese composers constitute what I call “new Chinese music,” which I argue has played a defining role in New York City’s cultural landscape and in the development of Western art music in general. The influence of Chinese composers and their works …

The Surreal Voice In Milan's Itinerant Poetics: Delio Tessa To Franco Loi, Jason Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of Italy’s linguistic history, dialect literature has evolved a s a genre unto itself. The scope of research presented in this study examines the question of dialect literature as a valid genre which bears lines of demarcation that would assign it the distinction of genre. Research reveals that in fact the simple election of a language, or dialect, does not itself constitute a genre; moreover, most dialect literature bears characteristics that would neatly place it in another genre.

To examine this verity, this research compares two dialect poets who employ Milanese as a means of transmission …

Handbook For The Deceased: Re-Evaluating Literature And Folklore In Icelandic Archaeology, Brenda Nicole Prehal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The rich medieval Icelandic literary record, comprised of mythology, sagas, poetry, law codes and post-medieval folklore, has provided invaluable source material for previous generations of scholars attempting to reconstruct a pagan Scandinavian Viking Age worldview. In modern Icelandic archaeology, however, the Icelandic literary record, apart from official documents such as censuses, has not been considered a viable source for interpretation since the early 20th century. Although the Icelandic corpus is problematic in several ways, it is a source that should be used in Icelandic archaeological interpretation, if used properly with source criticism.

This dissertation aims to advance Icelandic archaeological theory …

The Impact Of State Violence On Women During The 22 Years Of Dictatorship In The Gambia, Isatou Bittaye-Jobe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the gendered dynamics of dictatorship in The Gambia by exploring the impact of state sanctioned violence on women during former President Yahya Jammeh’s twenty-two years of tyranny in the country. During the two-decade long brutal reign under Jammeh, Gambians from all walks of lives faced gross human rights violations and abuses that inflicted collective national trauma on the population. Therefore, this project examines how Jammeh’s tyrannical rule affected women’s rights, health, and wellbeing. Using a content analysis approach coupled with semi-structured interviews with victims and survivors, I argue that although the dictatorship affected all sectors of the …

Own Your Politics: The Entanglement Of Resistance And The Luxury Fashion Industry, Brent A. Van Horne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis takes as its subject the increasing instrumentalization of social and political content by the fashion industry in recent years. Such content raises questions about the relationship between notions of political resistance and market capitalism. Marxist theorists such as Frederic Jameson and David Harvey would perhaps view this phenomenon as a confirmation of the ways in which late capitalism incapacitates forms of political descent by absorbing it within its machinations. Within this line of thinking, the way in which various designers use the fashion runway as a forum for protest would suggest late capitalism’s seemingly boundless ability to absorb …

Prosody And Intonation In Formosan Languages, Benjamin K. Macaulay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Formosan languages are the languages of the Aboriginal peoples of Taiwan. These languages are part of the Austronesian language family, and represent all but one primary branch of this family of 1,200+ languages. The Formosan languages are endangered, some critically so. While these languages have seen attention in the literature for their syntactic and phonological systems, little work has been done on their prosodic structure or intonation.

This dissertation analyzes the prosodic structure and intonational phonology of Mantauran Rukai, Budai Rukai, Tsou, Kanakanavu, Hla’alua, Sandimen Paiwan, Piuma Paiwan, Kavalan, Amis, Bunun, Tgdaya Seediq, Truku Seediq, and Pazeh, based on …

Video On Film: Video Essay, Videographic Criticism, And Digital Academic Publishing, Tian Leng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the 2010s, an academic practice called “videographic criticism,” utilizing video essay creation and digital academic publishing, became a popular form of film criticism in the field of film studies. The emergence of such a videographic trend in academia and the existence of video essays in public video-sharing websites have made the task of justifying the scholarly values of video essays an urgent one. Through the analysis of the relationship between the video essay and the essay film, this study shows that the essayistic mode is crucial to distinguish videographic criticism from popular commentary. To understand the potentials of videographic …

Mobile Practices And The Production And Curation Of Pottery: A View From The Ancient Southern Russian Steppe Using Portable Methods Of Investigation, Nicole A. Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The southern Russian steppe is located in an intermediary position between the Caucasus, Lower Don and Lower Volga steppe, between which peoples, goods, and technologies often moved throughout prehistory, likely facilitated by small scale seasonal movements and occasional migrations by mobile pastoralists. Conducted in collaboration with the Steppe Archaeological Expedition of the State Historical Museum’s unfolding research on temporary pastoral camps in the Sal-Manych region of the Rostov oblast and Republic of Kalmykia, this dissertation focused on the production and curation of pottery in contexts associated with the emergence and subsequent development of mobile pastoralism from the late fifth millennium …

Encoding And Perception Of Voicing And Aspiration In Native And Non-Native Listeners In Quiet And In Background Noise, Reethee Antony

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The perception and encoding of voice cues in consonants have been well studied, whereas there has been relatively little research on aspiration. The current study examined the encoding and perception of aspiration and voicing in Hindi, American English, and Tamil listeners when relevant cues were and were not degraded by noise. This study is novel because of the inclusion of aspiration, the language groups, inclusion of noise masking, and inclusion of auditory evoked potentials (in addition to behavioral testing).

The first aim was to determine whether language groups for whom aspiration and/or voicing is phonemically contrastive show better perception and …

Between Kurdistan And Damascus: Kurdish Nationalism And Arab State Formation In Syria, Alexander K. Mckeever

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the fall of the Ottoman empire, Kurdish nationalism has developed as an ideology within a regional state system where Kurds lack national representation or recognition. This ideology has manifested itself into a fractured movement where the contemporary state borders that separate the Kurdish population at large have proven to be both a limiting and a creative factor. This thesis examines the history of Kurdish nationalism in Syria with a focus on both the local context as defined by Syria’s borders in addition to the broader region, for the politics of Kurds in Syria have clearly been shaped by interactions …

The Material Culture Of Temperature: Measurement, Capital And Semiotics, Scott W. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temperature was invented in the 17th century. While cosmologists affirm that fluctuations in heat are as old as the universe, the intensive quantified scale marking these fluctuations has a relatively short history. This dissertation analyzes why temperature developed when it did and what temperature does for and to its users. I demonstrate that the ubiquitous and quotidian epistemological artifact temperature epitomizes capitalized methods of seeing, measuring, and knowing. At its broadest, the concern of this dissertation is the material culture of knowledge production among capitalizing populations—those that believe in and practice the perpetually accelerating asymmetrical growth of wealth.

In this …

The Politics Of Hip Hop: A Political Analysis Of Hip Hop’S History And Its Complicated Relationship With Capitalism, Danielle Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the emergence of the Hip Hop movement in the 1970s in areas of New York City often referred to more generally as the South Bronx. Focusing mostly on the 1970s and 1980s, this thesis explores the underlying conditions that Hip Hop was born out of. Influenced by both global and national politics, Hip Hop provided a common space for underrepresented individuals and groups to unify, create common identities, and liberate themselves from the oppressive norms and political activity of a rich, mostly white, and dominant American society that tried to erase or silence them. This revolutionary aspect …

A Computational Study In The Detection Of English–Spanish Code-Switches, Yohamy C. Polanco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Code-switching is the linguistic phenomenon where a multilingual person alternates between two or more languages in a conversation, whether that be spoken or written. This thesis studies the automatic detection of code-switching occurring specifically between English and Spanish in two corpora.

Twitter and other social media sites have provided an abundance of linguistic data that is available to researchers to perform countless experiments. Collecting the data is fairly easy if a study is on monolingual text, but if a study requires code-switched data, this becomes a complication as APIs only accept one language as a parameter. This thesis focuses on …

Speech Enhancement Using Speech Synthesis Techniques, Soumi Maiti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traditional speech enhancement systems reduce noise by modifying the noisy signal to make it more like a clean signal, which suffers from two problems: under-suppression of noise and over-suppression of speech. These problems create distortions in enhanced speech and hurt the quality of the enhanced signal. We propose to utilize speech synthesis techniques for a higher quality speech enhancement system. Synthesizing clean speech based on the noisy signal could produce outputs that are both noise-free and high quality. We first show that we can replace the noisy speech with its clean resynthesis from a previously recorded clean speech dictionary from …