Digital Commons Network^™

Sweetness And Femininity: Fashioning Gendered Appetite In The Victorian Age, Michael Krondl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since at least the nineteenth century sweetness and a preference for sweet foods has been linked to femininity. Western, middle-class women learned and reproduced normative gendered dietary behavior due to both private and public pressure to control their appetites and those of their children. In performing their gendered roles, they came to embody them through everyday rituals such as teatime. Sugary foods and drinks served as necessary props in these performances. Theorists, most prominently Jean-Jacques Rousseau, began to propose a linkage of sweet foods with femininity in the seventeen hundreds. In the following century, the medical profession explained women’s tastes …

A History Of The Center For The Study Of Women And Society, 1975–2015, Clarisa Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the early 1970s, New York City was experiencing an extreme fiscal crisis, with a reported debt of at least $600 million. In CUNY, students were protesting admissions policies that favored the white middle class and hikes in tuition. At the same time, the women’s movement was in the midst of the “second wave,” focusing on women in the workplace and in education. It’s in the midst of these tumultuous times that the first motions to create what was then called the Center for the Study of Women and Sex Roles began in 1975 by Graduate Center faculty Joan Kelly, …

Virility And Defeat: Masculinities In Italy Between Fascism And The Sexual Revolution, Davide Giuseppe Colasanto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is the history of how masculinity evolved in a postfascist western European country. Militaristic virility was a core tenet of fascist Italy. World War Two weakened it profoundly, as men’s and women’s conceptions of their own sexual identities were fundamentally reshaped by violence and defeat. At the same time, consumer culture, exemplified by American GIs and expanding continuously through the 1950s and 1960s, encouraged the emergence of a new kind of man, only for this type, too, to be contested in turn in the wake of the New Left rebellions of 1968 and through the tumultuous 1970s. In all …

Fatal And Non-Fatal Police Shootings In The United States, 2015: An Examination Of Open-Source Data, Yuchen Hou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Purpose and Significance: Police shootings do not always result in death. This fact raises a question of what distinguishes fatal and non-fatal police shootings (FNFPS). However, no existing database is available to address how often and under what circumstances civilians have died from or survived police shootings in the United States. To fill the gaps, this dissertation research uses open sources to create a crowdsourced national database on FNFPS in the United States in 2015. The creation of this database provides researchers insights into the suitability and sustainability of open-source research applied for studying police shootings and offers practitioners …

Control, Allegiance, And Shame In Male Qing Dynasty Hairstyles, Carolle Pinkerton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is about the politicization of hairstyles in imperial China. They indicated conformity with social norms, or rebellion against them. This was especially true under the country’s last dynasty. The Manchu conquerors imposed their own hairstyle, the queue, on their Han Chinese subjects to make their rule palpable to China’s illiterate millions. “Hair martyrs” who refused to accept this “barbarous” hairstyle were ruthlessly eliminated. The Manchus had feared assimilation into the much larger Han population. But the introduction of one uniform male hair style for both Manchus and Han blurred the lines between the two groups. In this way …

Discrimination, Psychological Well-Being, And Racial Importance In U.S. Native-Born And Caribbean Black Americans, Jaime E. Mccaw

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Objective: The present study examines the experiences of perceived discrimination and psychological well-being among two non-Hispanic Black American ethnic groups, Black Americans whose sole known country of origin is the United States and Black Americans with Caribbean heritage. Lifetime and everyday discrimination, life dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, hopelessness, and psychological distress are explored for each group. The impact of racial identity importance on each of these experiences is explored through self-identification with an identity that is defined racially or nationally (e.g., Black, American, or both equally), and the interaction between ethnicity and sex is considered.

Methods: Data are from adults recruited …

Historical Sisters: Black Feminist Actions Across History And Literary Studies, Jazz A. Milligan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis seeks to understand how the actions of Black women from the past have inspired the modern Black female literary movement. This thesis focuses on three historical women: Phillis Wheatley, Elizabeth Freeman, and Cathay Williams, and their literary sisters: bell hooks, Barbara Smith, and Patricia Hill Collins. By viewing the lives of these historical women through a modern-day lens, we can understand how their actions created a ripple effect that Black women are still discussing today. Black feminism did not start in a vacuum, and the actions of everyday Black women have pushed us forward to being more accepting …

Indigenous Mexicans In New York City: Immigrant Integration, Language Use, And Identity Formation, Leslie A. Martino-Velez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As indigenous Mexican immigrants migrate, settle, and raise families in the United States, parents, particularly women, and their children increasingly have contact with community institutions, such as schools. Despite their growing numbers in U.S. schools, indigenous children, youth, and their parents are often invisible due to their ethnolinguistic identities and undocumented status. Understanding what parents do to help their children is essential to understanding the first generation's integration and their children, the second generation.

To better understand this, I conducted an ethnographic research study at a bilingual Head Start program in New York City, in East Harlem, where many undocumented …

Tracing The Trajectory: Exploring The Origins, Iterations, And Impacts Of The Muslim Travel Ban, Dalia Yousef

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Muslim Travel Ban emerged as an explicitly discriminatory policy when former President Trump signed Executive Order 13769 on January 27, 2017. The first version of the Ban suspended the entry of travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries into the United States. After several iterations, the third version of the ban was upheld by the Supreme Court on June 26, 2018, and only rescinded by a Presidential Executive Order issued by President Joe Biden on January 20, 2021. Although the Ban received significant media attention, it was analyzed by only a few scholarly works utilizing legal and discursive approaches. This thesis …

Armored Feelings: Romantic Love, Sexual Consent, And Gender-Based Violence In French First World War Narratives (1914–1956), Angélique Ibáñez Aristondo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Armored Feelings examines how the First World War reconfigured how the French thought and wrote about romantic love, sexual consent, and gender-based violence. It posits this devastating event as a critical juncture during which the misogynistic and racist notion of amour à la Française took its modern shape as a rhetoric buttressing the nation’s brittle sense of cultural superiority while obscuring diverse forms of gendered aggression – especially those perpetrated by its citizens against women. This dissertation also establishes that the notion of women’s sexual consent coalesced during the period under examination as a troubled and troubling response to the …

Unraveling The Geographies Of The U.S. Public Education System: An Analysis Of Scale, Segregation, And Hegemony, Olivia Ildefonso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Other than one or two studies that focus on specific state-wide systems of public education, there has been no accounting for how the U.S. public education system came about in relation to space and scale. My dissertation research seeks to fill in this gap. Through focusing on the development of public education in the North and the South, I provide a foundation for understanding the grounded and contested processes of scale production that largely determined the U.S. public education system’s design and function.

In each of the seven chapters, I detail how fights over the structure and purpose of public …

“She Too ‘Omanish’”: Young Black Women’S Sexuality And Reproductive Justice In Bluefields, Nicaragua, Ishan Elizabeth Gordon-Ugarte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Most never-married young “Creole” (Afro-Caribbean) women in Bluefields, Nicaragua are raised in fundamentalist Protestant families and institutions that emphasize sexual abstinence before marriage. In this context, abstinence is required to maintain social standing and “respectability.” Nevertheless, women in Bluefields, the administrative center of Caribbean Nicaragua, exhibit what Creoles themselves understand to be high rates of sexuality and pregnancy among post-menarche unmarried teenaged women (USAID, 2012; Mitchell et al. 2015). Such young women’s pregnancies occur at an important developmental stage of their lives and have long been associated by social scientists with adverse social, emotional, and health situations. These scholars have …

"It Was Handed To Them": The Origins Of Targeted Delivery And The Spirit Of Nanomedicine, Marzena Woinska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nanotechnology is widely recognized as an important field. Since the 2000s, nano-based targeting has been a cutting-edge approach in cancer research. To specify what nanomedicine means and describe its significance at the cultural level, this study harnesses data from peer-reviewed articles published in leading scientific journals.

Balancing precariously between sociological theory and science and technology studies, this project turns to nanomedicine’s origins to address broader questions regarding the relationship between science and society and the causes of scientific discovery and technological innovation. It tells the story of nanotechnology's discursive formations taking on a life of their own and congealing into …

A Multilevel Analysis Of Political Risk, Marlon J. Guzman Valdera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay aims to diminish the conceptual fragmentation that exists, in relation to political risk, by introducing a multilevel approach to assess risk. While traditional approaches understand political risk to be a result of the political action of host-states against multinationals, this essay shows that there are other actors, like the host-nation civil society and the international community, that also play a role in the production of political risk. Although traditional approaches assert that political risk can solely target multinationals individually, this paper states that risk can affect a firm at an industrial and country level. I claim that political …

The Relationship Between Turks And Armenians Leading Up To And During The Great War, Kutay Agardici

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the long-standing debate over the events that transpired during the late Ottoman Empire between local Armenians and their predominately Muslim neighbors as well as the government. The term, “Armenian Genocide” has been used often to describe these tragic events. My writing goes into depth regarding the background history of this term. I write about the narrative of what happened between the two major groups during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as told by multiple different scholars. Narratives included are of Abdul Hamid II’s reign, the political parties created by Armenians in order for protest, the …

Go Off: The Geography And Labor Of Off- And Off-Off-Broadway, Sean C. Mellott

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Off- and Off-Off-Broadway remain ill-defined and misunderstood sectors of New York City’s theatre industry, at least when compared with Broadway. This capstone project examines these dual sociocultural spaces and defines some of their contours through a primary analytical lens of geography (the physical locations where Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced) and a secondary lens of labor (the professional contexts in which Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced). Both elements speak to the material conditions of theatrical production in New York City, offering clues as to Off- and Off-Off-Broadway’s position within the entertainment industry and their relationship to the larger social structure …

Committed To The Fragment: Feminist Literature And The Promise Of Wellness, Lynne Beckenstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“I have never been able to blind myself” to the cruelty of a world that “destroys its own young in passing…out of not noticing or caring about the destruction,” Audre Lorde tells us in her 1980 “mythobiography” Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. This quality, Lorde says, “according to one popular definition of mental health, makes me mentally unhealthy.” In rejecting psychological self-possession as a sign of wellness, this passage also rejects it as one of sovereignty’s conditions. At the time of Lorde’s writing, this version of sovereignty already dominated the landscape of therapeutic culture in the United States, …

Attitudes Towards Wearing Masks Among Young Adults, Diana Saiki, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Jay Kandiah

Publications and Research

The purpose of this study was to investigate attitudes about mask characteristics among young adults. Research questions included the following: (1) How do attitudes about: Do practical characteristics of masks influence mask-wearing? and (2) Does mask style and extrinsic characteristics influence mask-wearing? A mixed-methods approach was used. In December 2020, a survey was distributed online to fashion classes in the Midwest(rural) and Northeast (urban). The questionnaire contained a demographics section, open-ended questions about participants’ attitudes about masks, questions on mask-wearing behaviour, and a list of garment characteristics. The open-ended questions were analyzed for themes. The Likert scale questions were analyzed …

A Call For The Library Community To Deploy Best Practices Toward A Database For Biocultural Knowledge Relating To Climate Change, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Abstract

Purpose – In this paper, a call to the library and information science community to support documentation and conservation of cultural and biocultural heritage has been presented.

Design/methodology/approach – Based in existing Literature, this proposal is generative and descriptive— rather than prescriptive—regarding precisely how libraries should collaborate to employ technical and ethical best practices to provide access to vital data, research and cultural narratives relating to climate.

Findings – COVID-19 and climate destruction signal urgent global challenges. Library best practices are positioned to respond to climate change. Literature indicates how libraries preserve, share and cross-link cultural and scientific knowledge. …

The Effect Of The Seattle Police-Free Chop Zone On Crime: A Microsynthetic Control Evaluation, Eric L. Piza, Nathan T. Connealy

Publications and Research

Research Summary:

Nightly confrontations occurred between protestors and officers outside of the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD’s) East precinct in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. On June 8, 2020, the SPD abandoned the East precinct in an attempt to calm the situation. Following closure of the precinct, the Capitol Hill Occupation Protest (CHOP) took hold in the surrounding 6-block area. The CHOP occupation lasted until July 1, 2020. Over this time period, CHOP operated as an autonomous zone, with police officers not patrolling and generally not responding to calls for police service within the area. We used the microsynthetic control …

Rental Discrimination On The Basis Of Immigration Status, Diego S. Osorio

Theses and Dissertations

We employ a field experiment to assess the degree of housing discrimination against Hispanic immigrants versus someone with Hispanic heritage. The results indicate that individuals who indicate that they are immigrants in their rental applications are less likely to receive a response.

Stratified Entry Into Illegality: How Immigration Policy Shapes Being Undocumented, Sofya Aptekar, Amy Hsin

Publications and Research

Research shows that legal status is a critical axis of stratification in the United States but is less clear about the variably permeable boundaries around illegality and the systematic ways in which migrants are channeled into and out of the liminal states of illegality. Drawing on analysis of 105 interviews with a diverse group of undocumented or formerly undocumented immigrant young adults in New York City collected in 2018-19, we introduce the concept of stratified entry into illegality to illustrate how migrants’ nationality, race, and socioeconomic status shape their mode of entry which, in turn, shapes opportunities to adjust legal …

The Blind Spots Of Sociotechnical Imaginaries: Covid-19 Scepticism In Brazil, The United Kingdom And The United States, Renan Gonçalves Leonel Da Silva, Larry Au

Publications and Research

During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, experts and policymakers mobilised various slogans to compel the public to help defeat COVID-19. By comparing Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States, this study shows how dominant sociotechnical imaginaries tied to the slogans were mobilised. We argue that the blind spots of these dominant sociotechnical imaginaries contributed to subversive sociotechnical imaginaries and made room for COVID-19 scepticism. In Brazil, calls to ‘take care of yourself’ contributed to a sceptical stance that individualised responsibility. In the United Kingdom, calls to ‘protect the NHS’ contributed to sceptical accusations of whataboutism …

Understanding Covid-19 Among People Of Dominican Descent In The U.S.: A Comparison Of New York, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island And Connecticut, Ramona Hernandez, Pedro Ortega, Nancy Sohler, Sarah Marrara

Publications and Research

The present study “Understanding COVID-19 Among People of Dominican Descent in the U.S.: A Comparison of New York, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Connecticut” is the first research study to examine the experience of people of Dominican origins residing in the United States (U.S.) amidst the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The current study is based on a probabilistic and representative sample of Dominicans across the seven states in which the majority—85%—of Dominicans living in the U.S. reside. The Dominican Studies Institute (CUNY-DSI) at City College and the School of Medicine, both of the City University …

The Urban Maroons Of Afro-Dominican Music, Paul Austerlitz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Bmcc Borough Of Manhattan Community College 2022-2023 Bulletin, Borough Of Manhattan Community College

Archives

This is the official college catalog for 2022-2023. It contains course descriptions as well as information on degree programs, college resources and services, admissions, tuition and fees, financial aid, a profile of the college, and rules and regulations.

Supportive Strategies For Community College Human Services Online Internships: A Case Study Of Guttman Community College’S Remote Binary Model, Anya Y. Spector, Nicole Kras

Publications and Research

Creating a viable human services internship program at the community college level presents many challenges, from retaining partner agencies willing to supervise, often inexperienced, beginning students, to retaining students willing to overcome personal, academic, and financial challenges to participate in an internship. These challenges were exacerbated by restrictions placed on in-person teaching and internships during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Guttman Community College’s human services program has developed a remote binary internship model that offers fieldwork students the benefits of participating in an internship through online agency-based supervised field placements or class-based asynchronous assignments for fieldwork students that cannot participate …

Instructors Reflect On How Their Preservice Preparation And Ongoing Professional Development Prepared Them To Address Oppressive Dynamics In Adult Esol Programs In The United States, David A. Housel

Publications and Research

For decades, researchers have asserted that the preservice preparation for instructors of adult emergent bi/multilingual learners (EBLs) in the United States can be inconsistent, and access to ongoing professional development (PD) can be insufficient to address the demands of the 21st century classroom. A previous study conducted by the author revealed that instructors of adult EBLs felt adequately prepared to teach English, but they often felt ill-equipped to address the learning challenges and oppressive dynamics that might manifest in their adult English to Speakers of Other Language (ESOL) classrooms. This convergentmixed methods studywas a preliminary attempt to address these issues. …

“Islamization” And Crackdown In Ningxia: Another Xinjiang?, Yan Sun

Publications and Research

Since late 2016, Ningxia has drawn attention as a new target in Beijing’s drive to “Sinicize Islam.” The removal of overt signs of the Islamic faith and Arab influences is viewed as representing a new front in the CCP’s sweeping rollback of religious freedom. Is Ningxia another Xinjiang as both the party and its critics fear? This paper argues that it is not at the empirical level but shares with Xinjiang key underlying dynamics at the systemic level. At the empirical level, Ningxia’s “Islamization” stemmed largely from local authorities’ use of the Islamic part of Ningxia’s heritage as a developmental …

Graduate Bulletin 2022-2023, Cuny John Jay College

College Bulletins

Covers academic year 2022-2023