Digital Commons Network^™

His 242.C301 – Contemporary European History From The Global South / Third World Perspective, Soheil Asefi

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus for HIS 242: Contemporary European History builds on a course taught in Lehman College’s History Department in 2025 and has been revised for Fall 2027. It approaches European history from the French Revolution to the present through Global South perspectives, emphasizing empire, class struggle, migration, anti-colonial movements, gender, and sexuality. Combining primary sources, scholarship, digital archives, and multimedia, the course encourages historical analysis through discussion and student presentations. Developed through the Open Knowledge Fellowship, this Zero Textbook Cost syllabus brings together open educational resources, open-access materials, and CUNY library resources.

Community College Librarian Needs Assessment: Academic Status And Research Interest, Christine (Mi-Seon) Kim, Stephanie Delano Davis

Publications and Research

This pilot study explores the results of the Spring 2023, “Needs Survey for Community College Librarians” conducted by the Community and Junior College Libraries Section (CJCLS).  CJCLS is a section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). One hundred and seventeen individuals participated in the survey. The survey asked community college librarians about their academic employment status and publication requirements, their interest in research, and the support for research available to them at their institutions. The key findings of this research show a broad range of academic status classification among …

The Economics Of Modern Basketball Fandom, Holden Velasco

Capstones

In an increasingly money-sucking economy, many Americans are feeling the aching of their wallets. Basketball, once serving as an escape from the outside world, has now turned into a money-making machine where fans are paying to keep it running. It’s inescapable, whether it’s the rising costs to watch the professionals, forking thousands of dollars for children to play or sports gambling being plastered everywhere. Basketball no longer feels like basketball.

Wage Inequalities In Informal Work: Race, Sex, And Citizenship Among Latino Workers In New York State, Amalia Torrecillas Fernandez

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

This report examines wage variation within informal work in New York State from 2016 to 2022, with particular attention to Latino workers. Using American Community Survey data from three five-year periods (2016, 2019, and 2022). The analysis explores how median hourly wages differ by ethnicity, sex, citizenship status, race, age, and nativity.

Informal workers represented 4.6%-4.7% of New York's workforce, approximately 569,000 to 589,000 workers between the years of study. A substantial wage gap persisted throughout the study period. Formal workers earned $18/hour in 2016 versus $12 for informal workers; by 2022, this widened to $24 versus $14, underscoring the …

Intl 30800: Research Methods For International And Global Studies, Eliza Marks

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus was developed for INTL 30800: Research Methods in International and Global Studies at City College of New York (CCNY). This project-based course introduces International and Global Studies students to research methods, with a focus on how social scientists formulate questions, design and carry out research, and interpret evidence. The course is designated Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC).

Growing, Connecting, And Reflecting: Interpersonal Communication In Relationships, Gordon Alley-Young

Open Educational Resources

"Growing, Connecting, and Reflecting: Interpersonal Communication in Relationships" by Gordon Alley-Young is an Open Educational Resource (OER) textbook exploring communication in interpersonal relationships. The text emphasizing that communication is a collaborative, co-creation of meaning across many contexts and channels. The text recognizes the pervasive influence of culture on communication to recognize how our diverse backgrounds shape relational dynamics and dialogue. Topics and themes explored in the text include: self-concept, perception, cultural awareness, effective listening, emotion, verbal and nonverbal communication, relational climates and conflict, and the formation and evolution of foundational interpersonal relationships. The text encourages individual reflection on the reader's …

Wikipedia In The Classroom: From Orientation To Application, Kristen L. Hodnett

Open Educational Resources

"Wikipedia in the Classroom: From Orientation to Application" is a flexible mini-unit designed to help early-career teachers rethink how open web tools can be used in the classroom. Built for graduate teacher preparation programs, the unit breaks learning into 15- to 45-minute micro-lessons spread across a semester. This structure gives future educators low-stakes, repeated opportunities to build digital literacy without taking time away from core course content.

The curriculum walks students through a clear, three-phase framework:

• Orientation & Exploration: Students unpack how Wikipedia actually works—from talk pages to sourcing standards—while examining missing voices, bias, and who gets to create knowledge …

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The State Of The Unions 2026: A Profile Of Organized Labor In New York City, New York State, And The United States, Ruth Milkman, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

The 2026 State of the Unions report finds that while union density remains strong in New York, membership rates remain largely unchanged, despite renewed organizing, successful strikes and strong public support for labor. Union density stands at 20.5 percent in New York City and 20.9 percent statewide, more than double the national rate of 10 percent, yet well below levels recorded two decades ago. The report also examines the persistent divide between public- and private-sector unionization, the industries and workers sustaining organized labor, and the forces limiting growth. A special section considers Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s labor-friendly record and the opportunities …

Intimate Partner Violence And Emotion Regulation Among Emerging Adults: Investigating The Roles Of Dispositional Mindfulness And Executive Function In The Context Of A Laboratory-Induced Stress Paradigm, Mikell Bursky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a major public health concern that impacts an estimated 10 million men and women in the United States annually. IPV refers to a range of physical, sexual or psychological forms of aggression committed against a current or former romantic partner in the context of a relationship. The highest rates of IPV are observed in emerging adulthood, a developmental period between the ages of 18 to 25 that is significant for the transition from adolescence into adulthood, and the establishment of first meaningful intimate relationships. Although distal risk factors for IPV such as violence in the …

Social Media-Based Social Comparisons Among Socially Anxious Young Adults: The Role Of Cognitive Reappraisal, Jennifer L. De Rutte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social media is a central context for social interaction and self-evaluation among young adults. For those with elevated social anxiety, these environments may be especially salient because they provide frequent opportunities for social comparison. Although upward social comparison on social media has been linked to poorer emotional outcomes, less is known about its experimental effects among socially anxious young adults or whether upward and downward comparison have distinct effects that extend to later socially evaluative situations. The present study examined these questions in 84 socially anxious young adults randomly assigned to view simulated Instagram feeds eliciting upward comparison, downward comparison, …

Dancing In Circles: Bon Dance As Performance Of The Past, Travis Robb Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project traces the contours of the Japanese folk dance tradition of Bon Dance in Hawaiʻi through the nuances of public scholarship, diaspora, and racial capitalism by producing an original play which aims to perform the knowledge and praxis which the performance ritual puts forward. Treating Bon Dance as muse, the original play examines the necessity of turning to the past in order to disrupt a future made inevitable by oppressive systems; a fiction that comments on and critiques the predictive and generative technologies that have embedded themselves into society at large. Through intertwining conversations that explore prophecy and …

Analyzing Harmony In Bulgarian And Bulgarian-Influenced Choral Arrangements From The Radio To The Screen, Annie Beliveau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates developments in arrangements and compositions made for Bulgarian choirs between 1950 and 2025. Arrangements from Bulgaria’s communist period (1944-1989), when musical radio broadcasts were tailored to promote nationalist sentiment, eventually reached the ears of foreigners on the other side of the Iron Curtain via recordings and ensemble tours. These obrabotki (arrangements of folk tunes) became popular in the “world music” boom of the 1980s, and foreign composers soon began to create new compositions for Bulgarian choirs to sing on albums and in scores for film, television, and video games. Over time, the uses of Bulgarian choir in …

Urban Counterpoint (1992–2003): The Piano Music Of Ed Bland, Joseph Vaz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the piano music of Ed Bland, a politically and philosophically vocal composer active in the second half of the twentieth century, whose music draws on both the European and American twentieth-century avant-garde, and on African American vernacular music genres from ragtime to hip-hop. A review of the historical and personal context for these pieces, and a detailed examination of the compositional processes used in this music, work together to demonstrate how Bland thought about the relationship between different musical genres and languages.

Through this combination of theory of musical genre, historical and biographical study, and detailed analysis …

La Citación En Educación: Funciones Retóricas En Textos Académicos Escritos Por Expertos Y Estudiantes Universitarios, David Sanchez-Jimenez, Juan Antonio Núñez Cortés, Enrique Alonso Sainz

Publications and Research

The present study aims to investigate the differences in citation usage and frequency among university students and expert writers in the field of Education. The analyzed corpus comprises 50 papers written in this discipline and is divided into two sub-corpora: one consisting of 25 TFGs and the other one formed by 25 articles published in specialized journals. To examine this phenomenon, a qualitative and quantitative methodology was employed, performing a textual analysis of the rhetorical functions of citations. This analysis is based in the typology proposed by Petrić in her 2007 article, slightly modified for the purpose of the present …

Possibilities Of Being: Black Women's Storytelling As Archival Undoing, Dasharah Green

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constructs a discursive genealogy of Black women’s storytelling, positioning its art and aesthetics as a form of colonial archival undoing. Each chapter explores how transmission and documentation can transform—and circumvent—traditional colonial archives. Beginning at the start of the twentieth-century to present, this project traces the discursive legacies of Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff, and Staceyann Chin, examining each writer as a site of becoming as they individually (and collectively) seek to articulate an expansive idea of a Black world that constitutes a broader understanding of Black freedom. They each share a common goal of creating a …

Sec-Saxs And Sans Analyses Of The Talin•Vinculin Complex, Gilbert Reyes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focal adhesions (FA) are integrin-based cell-matrix adhesion sites composed of adaptor proteins that facilitate the generation of traction forces important for biological functions such as cell migration, embryo development, wound healing, tissue organization and stability, and immune responses. Mature FA are observed when both autoinhibited multi-domain scaffolding protein talin and membrane-cytoskeletal protein vinculin are activated and interact thus promoting the assembly and function of FA. While research has resolved truncated sections of autoinhibited talin and recruitment of vinculin due to mechanotransduction that exposes cryptic vinculin binding sites (VBS), little is known about the global modifications of full length talin in …

Vibe Diggers: The Sampling Of Brazilian Music In Hip-Hop, Romulo De Carvalho Moraes Barbosa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the trend of musical borrowings of 1970s MPB (música popular brasileira) by contemporary American hip-hop producers, especially in terms of what they have called a “Brazilian vibe.” A lot has been said about sampling already from legal, sociological, and historical points of view, but less has been said about its aesthetic procedures, and even less about the wider implications of a tendency for using transnational sources. In the case of MPB, hip-hop artists seem to understand the music they sample through an often vague, intuitive representation, which fuses qualities of those recordings with an intersubjective mood, a …

The Effects Of Chronic Nicotine Exposure On Dopamine-Mediated Reinforcement Learning And Striatal Neurotransmission, Srishti Bose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Tobacco is one of the most widely used substances across the United States; tobacco consumption is linked with several diseases and is one of the leading causes of preventable death in the country. Nicotine is the active substrate found in tobacco products, acting as a stimulant, which reinforces continued use. The introduction of tobacco-free options such as e-cigarettes and oral pouches has driven an increase in nicotine exposure across the population, especially in young adults. Acute nicotine use induces neuroadaptations in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, which mediates reinforcement learning and addiction, that potentiates reward-related neurotransmission. Furthermore, there are clinical studies …

Rethinking Road Racing Standards: Comparing New York Road Runners Race Results To Running Industry Standards, Jennie Coughlin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Running has undergone a third boom in participation since 2020, driven largely by people seeking fitness options that were outside and socially distanced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media has also allowed runners from groups that did not traditionally participate to find community. As the road racing population has expanded to include more people, some road racing industry standards have not kept up. This project assesses what the road racing community looks like and measures industry standards against the community of participants to see what changes in those standards would be needed to make them inclusive for all participants.

To …

Mesoscopic Scaling Of Microwave Transmittance And Disorder-Induced Alignment, Israel Kurtz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis presents microwave measurements and numerical simulations of wave propagation and transmission through random mesoscopic waveguides. We analyze the scaling of mesoscopic microwave conductance, including departures from Ohm’s law near channel openings, which are frequencies at which new propagating modes enter the system, and the evolution of modal phase alignment within the medium, which leads to the observed diversity of transmission eigenvalues. We extend the transmission matrix formalism to all sample depths using the flux matrix, which relates the flux amplitude within the sample to the incident flux, and decompose the flux at each sample depth into forward- and …

Authoritarianism, Hostility And Threat: An Analysis Of American Political Podcasts Surrounding The 2024 Presidential Election, Noah D. Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Political rhetoric surrounding key events has seen sharp increases in emotionally affective speech, intergroup sentiment, and rhetoric unbecoming of democratic societies in recent years. Similarly, semi-democratic and ideologically driven speech has become increasingly normalized within an era of political polarization and hardline beliefs in modern media. Within this economy of outrage, sensational and largely unmoderated media formats, particularly podcasts, have become a mainstay of political information and discourse. This raises an important question: how does rhetoric surrounding political events construct intergroup sentiment and authoritarian rhetoric within political media, particularly American political podcasts? Further, given political podcasts’ growing social influence in …

‘A Sense Of The Sea’: Grassroots Culture, Care, And Endurance In Swansea, Cymru, Katy Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues that under present conditions, everyday political-aesthetic life is not only about resistance or reproduction but about holding: the work of keeping people, practices, and attachment present and oriented as conditions change. Holding takes the form of care and maintenance; as practices of making, assembling, and imagining; and as the work that keeps open the possibility of renewed attachment to public things and to each other. In the field, this was named as ‘a sense of the sea’, an affective register characterized by wariness, attunement, attentiveness, orientation, and endurance. I am calling this a fragile infrastructure of …

Ultrafast Spectroscopy Of Organic Materials In Strong Light–Matter Interaction And Terahertz Optics, Kamyar Rashidi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ultrafast spectroscopy is a powerful tool for investigating phenomena that occur on extremely short timescales and for probing ultrabroadband spectral responses enabled by its ultrashort laser pulses. These capabilities are essential for advancing both the fundamental understanding of light–matter interactions and the development of next-generation optoelectronic technologies. The first part of this thesis investigates the ultrafast dynamics of organic exciton–polaritons and their application to controlling molecular excited-state processes using momentum-resolved pump–probe spectroscopy. A major challenge in these systems is the dark-state problem, where photoexcitation predominantly populates long-lived excitonic reservoir states that obscure the in trinsic dynamics of the hybrid light–matter …

Architects Of Mrna Fate: Molecular And Cellular Control Of P-Body Organization In The Drosophilia Melanogaster Female Germline, Samantha Milano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Processing bodies (P-bodies) are cytoplasmic ribonucleoprotein condensates that regulate mRNA storage, translational repression, and decay. While the biochemical principles governing condensate assembly have been extensively studied in vitro, how P-body organization is established and dynamically regulated in vivo to control specific mRNA populations remains poorly understood. This dissertation investigated the molecular and cellular mechanisms that govern P-body architecture and function in the Drosophila melanogaster female germline. First, I identified the conserved LSm protein Trailer Hitch (Tral) as a central organizer of P-body architecture. Using quantitative confocal and super-resolution microscopy combined with chemical perturbations, I showed that Tral coordinates the …

Introduction To Film, Teresa A. Fisher

Open Educational Resources

An introduction to the filmmaking process including film history, narrative, mise-en-scene, editing, cinematography, sound, and acting. Includes a chapter on documentary film, experimental film, and animation.

Comm 11 Fundamentals Of Interpersonal Communication Textbook, Teresa A. Fisher

Open Educational Resources

A survey of interpersonal communication.

Artificial Intelligence And Social Equities: Navigating The Intersectionalities In A Digital Age (Editorial), Daisuke Akiba, Julie Albright

Publications and Research

This editorial article introduces and synthesizes the Special Issue, “Artificial intelligence and social equities: navigating the intersectionalities in a digital age,” which examines how AI systems intersect with race, ethnicity, and interconnected identity dimensions across global contexts. The eight contributions span healthcare, digital media, higher education, organizational communication, and speculative futures, addressing anti-racist psychiatric algorithms, AI-generated visual disinformation, epistemic injustice between the Global North and South, algorithmically mediated rural–urban divides, culturally untranslated technology transfer, accessibility auditing across the AI lifecycle, and the tension between mechanical objectivity and empathic understanding. Read together, they show that AI is neither inherently …

‘Passing’ The Baton Of Trauma: Queer Failure Of The Women’S Sport Policy Working Group’S Anti-Trans ‘Position’, Meredith M. Bagley, Mary Anne Taylor, Sarah F. Price

Publications and Research

Engaging in critical rhetorical theory and methodology, we interrogate the contemporary landscape of anti-trans backlash in women’s sport. Specifically, we read the ‘TERF wars’ (Pearce et al.) across critiques of biofeminism (Pape) and whiteness (Fischer) while drawing upon critical social science research into trauma-bonding, bullying, and the structural impacts of gender verification policies. Our analysis focuses on the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group (WSPWG), offering a trauma-informed reading of the WSPWG’s ‘Position’ statement to illuminate how lesbian female athletes who were previously slandered for failing to meet femininity norms in sport are unable to overcome that trauma to recognize and …

Spn 313: Advanced Communication Skills, Aleksin Ortega, Aleksín H. Ortega

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus for SPN 313 (Advanced Communication Skills) at the College of Staten Island, CUNY, presents a zero-textbook-cost, OER-based course in advanced academic writing in Spanish designed for a mixed population of heritage speakers and advanced second-language learners. The course follows a genre-based progression through four textual forms — description, narration, exposition, and argumentation — organized around a recursive writing process of drafting, instructor feedback, and revision. Its signature assignment, the Autobiografía lingüística (Linguistic Autobiography), serves as the Spanish program's ACTFL-aligned assessment artifact and is supported by a structured independent-inquiry project on dialectal variation. The syllabus foregrounds the dialectal diversity …

The Self-Aware Room: A Framework For Operational Self-Awareness In Evolvable Blended Environments, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

The Self-Aware Room (SAR) is a room-scale research environment developed within the larger Balanced Blended Space and Blended Reality Performance System research trajectory. Rather than treating the room as a conventional “smart” environment composed of fixed automation technologies, SAR approaches it as an evolvable blended environment made from physical, virtual, conceptual, sensory, computational, and performative relationships. Its defining feature is not any particular sensor, model, or output device, but the set of transformations through which physical activity becomes structured observation, bounded representation, interpreted state, governed decision, and mediated response.

This paper develops the conceptual and methodological foundations of SAR as …