Digital Commons Network^™

Teaching And Technology: "You Can't Just Do The Same Thing Online", Sakina Laksimi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how faculty at the City University of New York navigated the abrupt transition to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing how pedagogy is shaped by technological, institutional, and social conditions. Drawing on twenty-two interviews with twelve faculty across eight disciplines, I use a grounded theory approach to analyze how instructors adapted courses, reimagined assessment, and sustained connection with students amid crisis. Three overlapping pedagogical orientations emerged: improvisational, relational, and design-based teaching. These approaches highlight how faculty balanced responsiveness, care, and intentional course design in environments mediated by digital platforms and marked by inequity. The study situates …

The Architecture Of Exclusion: Disability, Race, And The History Of New York City’S 600 Schools, Francine Almash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the largely erased history of New York City’s 600 schools—segregated public schools created to house students labeled as emotionally disturbed or socially maladjusted. These institutions, operating throughout the mid-20th century, disproportionately served Black and Puerto Rican youth, many of whom were placed in these schools under vague behavioral criteria and with little to no pathway for return to general education settings.

Combining archival research, longitudinal policy analysis, historical media review, and critical race and disability studies frameworks—including DisCrit (Disability Critical Race Theory)—this project situates the 600 schools at the intersection of institutional racism and ableism. It argues …

Text-Based Propaganda Detection, Vivek Sharma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the digital age, the swift consumption of news and the widespread dissemination of propaganda significantly threaten democratic principles and informed decision-making. News organizations, often aligned politically, tailor their content to appeal to specific audiences, thereby perpetuating biases. Despite advancements in detecting propaganda through various computational techniques, including Large Language Models(LLM) and BERT-based approaches, significant challenges persist concerning data availability and the effectiveness of detection tools. This thesis explores the landscape of text-based propaganda and reviews related research in textual analysis. It introduces a novel method for collecting a social-media based dataset, which includes analysis of journalists' tweets to discern …

Double Exposure: Motherhood And Filmmaking, Eddy Berzak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project explores the intersection of motherhood and filmmaking through a reflexive documentary that examines how women directors have historically navigated the tensions between creative careers and raising children. Drawing on feminist film theory and autoethnographic methods, the fourteen-minute video essay analyzes three pioneering autobiographical documentaries from the 1970s—Joyce at 34 (1973), Nana, Mom and Me (1974), and Women Are Naturally Creative: Agnès Varda (1977)—alongside original footage documenting my own experience as a mother with deferred filmmaking aspirations. The project employs reflexive documentary techniques to weave together film analysis and personal narrative, investigating the central question: why didn't I …

Online Resources For Oral Communication Courses, Sean P. Palmer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Online resources focusing on oral communication skills are lacking, even as online education itself expands. While I was aware of this lack, I didn’t realize its severity until LaGuardia Community College went fully remote during the 2020 global pandemic, and I was looking for online tutoring aids for oral communication. Furthermore, the information presented online is frequently unsuitable for the purposes of online pedagogy due to its specialized and jargony mode of presentation. Also, many existing assignments involving oral communication assume public speaking as the default model, despite the growing importance of emergent digital modes of oral performance, like podcasting …

Between The Buffer And The Black Box: Ed(1), Invisible Text, And Delegation In Word Processing, Kai Prenger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis provides a media archaeological and theoretical examination of ed(1), the Unix line editor developed by Ken Thompson at Bell Labs in 1969, arguing that its approach to "invisible text" processing established lasting patterns of human-computer collaboration that persist in contemporary digital systems. Through historical research, technical analysis, and critical interpretation, this study demonstrates how ed(1) embodied a particular epistemology of text processing that appears alien in a contemporary context, but proves insightful in the age of generative text creation.

ed(1) emerged from the unique convergence of Bell Labs' collaborative research culture, severe hardware constraints of early Unix systems, …

Re-Envisioning Digital Agency: From Representationalism To Interpretant-Driven Epistemology, Michael C. Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the epistemological and ethical foundations of digital technologies, particularly code and algorithmic systems, by considering their entanglement with representationalism. Arguing that code now functions as a dominant social agent and epistemic subject, through the concept of the Code’s-eye view, I explore how automated datafication reduces human experience to quantifiable inputs, reinforcing epistemic closure and social fragmentation. Drawing on pragmatist philosophy, including Peirce’s semiotics, Dewey’s democratic ethics, and Rorty’s conversational inquiry, I propose an interpretant-driven epistemology grounded in communal inquiry and interpretive openness. This alternative framework resists the binary logic of algorithmic rationality by emphasizing conflict and the …

Flotsam And Jetsam: The Role Of Mlb Integration In The Wreckage Of The Negro Leagues, Nastasia Pollas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“We are the ship, all else the sea.” Adapted from a Frederick Douglass speech, this quote by Rube Foster became the slogan of the Negro Leagues, illustrating the resolve and determination to prosper alone during a time of segregation. Setting aside long-standing rivalry and strife, Black baseball teams united under a shared vision of forming the first professional Black baseball league.

This paper examines how Giddens' structuration theory, connecting social structures with individual actions, can explain both the development and success of the league under segregation and its eventual demise during integration.

Effect Of Equation Of State On The Formation Of Binary Black Holes In Active Galactic Nucleus Disks, Theodore Edwards

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Active galactic nucleus disks have been proposed as a possibly dominant location of the mergers of binary black holes detected by gravitational wave observatories. The nonlinear interactions between stellar mass black holes and disk gas determine when binaries will form from single objects on nearby orbits. Prior work has used smoothed particle hydrodynamics models in an isothermal disk to study this problem. However, the local equation of state near the midplane of an optically thick accretion disk is adiabatic rather than isothermal, even if the radiative equilibrium temperature is azimuthally isothermal. Therefore, we investigate the use of an adiabatic equation …

Crisis Narratives And The Vicissitudes Of Haitian Foodways: A Critical Comparison Of Three Food Items, Marc S. Gabriel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Polities and media external to Haiti direct a lot of narrative focus on the country being the source of its own protracted crises. This represents a powerful narrative hegemony that casts the post-colonial nation as a zone of perpetual disasters or crisis. To maintain that narrative domination over Haiti, opportunistic observers of Haiti’s media spectacles of crisis only need to atomize the country’s newest crisis or natural disaster from the history that situates it. The elision of the Haitian memory – a memory of structural adjustment programs, systematic displacement, foreign-sponsored paramilitary violence, erosion of peasant foodways and agriculture – from …

Structural Characterization Of A Tarantula Toxin And Its Interactions With Lipid Bilayers And Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels, Krishnakoli Adhikary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Voltage-gated ion channels are membrane protein complexes. They allow the selective flow of their respective ions down an electrochemical gradient through a central ion conduction pore surrounded by four voltage-sensing domains (VSDs). Various neurological and cardiovascular diseases are caused by mutations in voltage-gated ion channels (VGICs). One of the biggest challenges today is addiction to opioid medication. Coming up with non-opioid drug leads can be a real blessing for society. This is where voltage-gated sodium channel research comes in. Na_v1.7, Na_v1.8, and Na_v1.9 are responsible for pain sensations. Loss or gain of function in …

Satellite-Host Galaxy Co-Evolution With Next-Generation Regulator Models, Austen Gabrielpillai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The evolution of satellites galaxies is an unsolved problem in galaxy formation. Recent observations such as the SAGA and ELVES surveys find tension in HI contents and star formation of satellites around their central host galaxies when compared to our own local environment, the Milky Way. These processes are potentially highly influenced by the host's circumgalactic medium (CGM), and to constrain these cases requires accurate and fast modeling of satellites-host interactions. In this work, we present our methodology for evolving z = 0 surviving satellites alongside their central galaxy in sapphire, a CGM regulator co-evolution model of galaxy formation. …

Tradition, Individuality, And Innovation In Western Classical Music Performance: A Quantitative Analysis Of Bach’S Fourth Cello Suite Prelude, Clare Monfredo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Why do we seek out new performances of a commonly performed piece of music? An essential tradition of Western classical music (WCM) is the performance of canonical works by composers, an activity that requires the interpretation and execution of written scores by individual performers. In this practice, performers are not only expected to determine the composer’s “intentions,” but also somehow (paradoxically) share these in a “unique” performance interpretation. In musical education, performers are trained by teachers to create these “unique” interpretations by learning how to intuit composers’ intentions in a system that passes down interpretative traditions through master-apprentice one-on-one lessons. …

Establishing A Marketing Agency – Assignment/ Collaborative Project, Feygens Saint-Joy Jr

Open Educational Resources

This project guides student teams through the process of establishing a fully developed advertising or promotions agency, mirroring real-world industry structures and practices. Teams will collaboratively define their agency’s identity by selecting a strategic focus, crafting a mission statement, choosing a name, and outlining roles, hierarchy, and services. The assignment emphasizes experiential learning through the creation of an organizational chart, the development of compensation models, and decisions regarding external facilitators such as freelancers or consultants. Students engage with multimodal resources, including videos, visuals, and templates, to support comprehension, creativity, and accessibility. Final submissions may take the form of a written …

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Characterization For The Study Of Beyond Lithium-Ion Battery Electrolytes, Allen Zheng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

To achieve a sustainable future, key issues in the energy and construction sectors such as the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and recycling of waste construction materials must be addressed. While fossil fuels offer a high energy density source of quick, consistent energy, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric offer intermittent energy output, requiring energy storage systems to maintain steady energy availability for consumers. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are widely used in consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and grid storage due to their high energy density, low self-discharge, and rechargeability. However, they are limited by high …

Mechanistic Insights Into The Neuroprotective Effects Of The Antidepressant Agomelatine In Alzheimer's Disease, Grace Terry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a complex neurodegenerative disease that has limited treatment options and no cure. AD is characterized by robust pathology including extracellular amyloid beta plaques, intracellular neurofibrillary tangles, neuronal and synaptic loss, neuroinflammation, and brain atrophy. AD presents with cognitive decline and memory loss but only years after neuropathology has started to accumulate. This robust pathology has made AD difficult to treat and highlights the need for therapeutics that modulate multiple pathways. Agomelatine (AGO) was selected by a high-throughput machine learning drug repurposing algorithm by our collaborator Dr. Lie Xie (Hunter College Dept. of Comp. Sci.) as having …

Investigating The Role Of Early Growth Response 1 (Egr1) Gene In Riluzole-Induced Apoptosis In Osteosarcoma, Syeda Maryam Azeem

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Osteosarcoma is a rare but aggressive bone malignancy most commonly affecting adolescents and young adults (AYA). With 5-year survival rate stagnating over the last four decades despite the advancements in multi-modal therapy, drug repurposing offers a rapid path to new osteosarcoma treatments. Recent studies suggest that Riluzole, a drug approved for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), may be repurposed for osteosarcoma treatment due to its ability to slow tumor progression and induce apoptosis. Previously, we have shown that Riluzole increases reactive oxygen species (ROS), activating c-Abl, which phosphorylates YAP in the nucleus. YAP then forms a complex with p73 to enhance …

Brownsville Taught Me: Reframing The Public Memory Of Brownsville’S History, Amyleth J. Vargas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Brownsville is a small neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn, New York, with a rich activist past. Community leaders and organizers have used the tenets of urban education, Black history, grassroots organizing, and community planning as the bases of their struggles for the expansion of justice and equality for Brownsville residents. This thesis discusses Brownsville’s rich history of activism. I use autoethnography, archival materials, and the theoretical framework of public memory to explore this rich history. The recovered stories about Brownsville that I recount here are designed to dispel misrepresentations of the community that have shaped the public memory of Brownsville. In …

From Stories To Strategy: Oral Histories As Qualitative Evidence For Neighborhood Planning, Randip K. Parhar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Developments in neighborhood planning have sought more grounded and community- engaged approaches to space and service design. This capstone project examines how oral history recordings can serve as a data source for neighborhood planning. It asks “How can computational methods of analysis be applied to oral history recordings to provide a source of information for neighborhood planning?” using Jamaica, Queens, as a testbed. Using R as a computational tool, the project applies foundational text mining techniques, such as term frequency analysis, n-gram analysis, and topic modeling, to explore patterns and themes within the recorded narratives. These methods can provide a …

The Crisis Of Safety, Well-Being, And Belonging Facing Lgbtq Children: Mad/Crip Of Color Critique Towards A Curriculum Of Radical Care, Jameson Goetz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, I turn toward the study of educational experience, defined broadly to include lived experiences both within and outside of formal schooling institutions. I approach curriculum as an ongoing project of self-understanding in which one becomes mobilized for engaged pedagogical action alongside others in the pursuit social justice. I am guided by the following question, foundational to the field of curriculum studies: for those of us who work alongside LGBTQ children, what knowledge is of most worth? Critically reflecting on ways of working alongside LGBTQ children in the pursuit of social justice, I formulate a mad/crip of color …

Moralists Or Moral Hypocrites? Leveraging Moral Psychology And Social Identity Theory To Increase Support For Reparations Amongst White Americans, Andre Oliver

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The economic gains America made from the enslavement of Africans have long been considered its original sin; indeed, most people living today would agree that such an enterprise was morally depraved. Yet, due to moral opposition, many White Americans reject reparative policies (i.e., reparations) that are developed to remedy the damages done to African Americans by slavery and the subsequent continued discrimination. The present research attempts to address two broad hypotheses across four empirical research studies. The first hypothesis tests whether White Americans' rejection of reparative policies related to slavery and Black discrimination is inherently a moral objection to taboo …

Toward A Generalizable Perceptual Hashing Framework For Image Manipulation Detection, Priyanka Samanta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis contributes to research in adversarial image manipulation detection. The primary motivation is the increasing need to verify digital images, especially for legal evidence, journalistic proof, or social media content—where manipulated or fabricated images can mislead, defame, or distort reality. A key application and contribution of this work is the development of eWitness, a blockchain application that generates and registers image provenance at capture time to enable independent verification of authenticity. The secret sauce behind the system is SmartHash, a novel and efficient perceptual hashing algorithm designed for real-world deployment in systems like eWitness. Unlike existing algorithms, SmartHash targets …

Repurposing Atractylenolide Iii, A Natural Anti-Inflammatory Compound, For Alzheimer’S Disease, Angela M. Steele

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurological condition ranked as the fifth leading cause of death in adults over the age of 65. Despite the severity, 98% of drugs have failed as treatments for AD. Current novel drug development approaches have been unable to produce a disease-modifying treatment as they often have a one-target approach, not accounting for the complex nature of the disease. One of the hallmarks of the disease, inflammation, may provide a better target for treatment because it interacts with multiple facets of the disease. Drug repurposing to identify compounds that mitigate inflammation in AD could provide …

Reduce, Replace, Reframe: How Civil Society Organizations Build Resilience In The Face Of Financial And Political Pressures, Merrill Sovner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In order for civil society organizations (CSOs) to perform essential functions to support democracy and prevent democratic erosion, they must operate sustainably, maintaining resources and legitimacy to carry out their missions. CSOs experience financial and political pressures when resources and legitimacy are withdrawn. CSOs facing both pressures may reduce their activities, replace lost funding, or reframe their work to engage new audiences. How CSOs respond in the face of financial and political pressures has implications for their role in hindering democratic erosion. Yet civil society organizations weather these pressures in ways that are not straightforward; the most targeted organizations may …

Scripted For Surveillance: Parole Revocation Hearings And The Performance Of Procedure In New York, Kelsey G. Greeff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines parole revocation hearings in New York as complex performances that extend carceral control beyond prison walls. Drawing on a composite vignette from the Bronx parole court, it analyzes the interplay between procedural reform, constitutional due process, and neoliberal governance. Using a dramaturgical framework informed by Michel Foucault’s discourse analysis and Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, the study identifies four interrelated processes: the judge as director, who orchestrates hearings according to institutional priorities; normalization, where repetition embeds structural inequality as routine; type-marking, the classification of parolees into predefined roles through accumulated records and cues; and the extension of …

Transitional Justice And Counter-Productivity: A Case Study Of Serbia And Croatia, Michael F. Curry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the post-Cold War era, transitional justice emerged as a method to reconcile societies that had suffered large-scale human rights abuses through autocratic oppression and/or intra-state conflicts. During this time, the concept of what transitional justice meant and what problems it could resolve expanded exponentially. However, the empirical results of such initiatives have been mixed. Many states subject to transitional justice initiatives have failed to liberalize or develop domestic governance capacities. Why do transitional justice initiatives fail even under the most favorable conditions?

The most common answer to this question is that these initiatives are often ineffective, hindered by a …

The Floodnet Community Engagement Guide, Véronëque Ignace, Sofia Mariyamis, Kendra Krueger, Polly Pierone, Hayley Elszasz, Hannah Eisler Burnett

The Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay, SRIJB

"At the Intersection of Science, Policy, and Community: The FloodNet NYC Community Engagement Strategy” is a public-facing community engagement guide that documents the strategies, tools, and lessons developed through FloodNet NYC, a cross-sector partnership among researchers at NYU and CUNY and New York City agencies. Designed as a practical resource, this guide shares our approach to community engagement and dissemination so that researchers, practitioners, community organizations, and public agencies can adapt these methods to their own urban climate science projects and other community-centered efforts that address climate challenges.

Grounded in community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles, the guide presents community engagement …

Multi-Modal Depth Estimation Using Camera And Mmwave Sensors, Alston D. Devero-Belfon

Student Theses

For accurately estimating the depth of environments with varying lighting conditions, reliable methods are limited. By utilizing wireless sensor technology in conjunction with cameras, a wide range of environments can be visualized, and objects within these environments can be tracked and monitored. Such methods offer cost-effective alternatives and provide a more secure, data-at-rest option for individuals with low vision, while also enhancing machine perception. In this work, we develop such a prototype that utilizes wireless sensors and cameras, which act in sync, enabling us to estimate the depth of objects within varying lighting environments to a level that is recognizable …

Machine Learning And Crime Prevention, Emily Lizewski

Student Theses

Predictive policing uses machine learning to analyze crime patterns and help law enforcement better efficient use their resources. These tools can improve accuracy by highlighting complex trends in large sets of data. While this technology has its advantages, it also raises important ethical and social questions. Within this paper we looks at how predictive policing works, focusing on the machine learning models often used such as decision trees, random forests, gradient boosting, and models that factor in both time and location. It also explores how these tools might unintentionally reinforce biases already present in historical crime data. In reviewing the …

The State Of The Unions 2025: 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

Organized labor has taken center stage in the 2020s, with workers leading successful organizing drives at Amazon, Starbucks, Apple, and across a range of industries from health care to higher education. Public approval of unions has reached its highest level in decades, and a new generation of workers is stepping forward as leaders in the movement. The State of the Unions 2025 provides the most comprehensive profile of organized labor in New York City, New York State, and the United States, highlighting where unions are growing, who is leading the charge, and how labor is shaping the future of work …