Digital Commons Network^™

Neural Mechanisms Of Context-Sensitive Behavior In The Adult Male Zebra Finch, Katherine L. Anderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Adapting behaviors to the perceived external environment is key to the success and survival of individuals in social species. This context-sensitive modulation of behavior is critical for informative interactions with conspecifics, like alerting a neighbor to a nearing predator or capturing the attention of a potential mate. For the adult male zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), a vocal-learning songbird, context-sensitive adaptions to a learned song are key for developing and maintaining pair-bonds with females who are extremely attentive to subtle modulations of song structure. In this thesis, I explore the hypothesis that the influence of a social behavior network …

The Long Arm Of The Law: The Far-Reaching Effects Of The Carceral State On Families, Madison Squiers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the extended consequences of mass incarceration in the United States, focusing on the social, economic, and psychological impacts on the nuclear families of incarcerated individuals. Through a comprehensive literature review of peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2024, this study highlights how female partners and children of imprisoned men face significant hardships, including emotional trauma, financial instability, and social stigma. These burdens are most acutely experienced by low-income families and communities of color, reflecting broader patterns of structural inequality. The findings underscore how punitive criminal justice policies—especially mandatory minimum sentencing and the War on Drugs—have created ripple …

Problems And Paradigms In The Central Sahel Of Africa, Georgia Graham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Africa’s Central Sahel region—comprising of the countries of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso—environmental hardship, historical trauma, and contemporary conflict intersect with profound challenges of nation-building, state construction, and economic development. Situated in the semi-arid transitional zone between the Sahara Desert and sub-Saharan Africa, these landlocked states suffer from extreme geographical vulnerability. From the colonial period through to the present, these nations have experienced recurring droughts, persistent food insecurity, and entrenched poverty. Population growth has dramatically outpaced economic development; youth unemployment, limited educational opportunities, and scarce resources fuel social tension and potential conflict. Islamist insurgencies and increasingly violent ethnic conflicts …

Placemaking And Belonging In Brooklyn: Bushwick City Farms, Marisa Cigliano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the spring of 2022, New York City has seen an increased rate of newly-arrived migrants from countries in Latin and Central America, Asia, and Africa. In accordance with the city’s “right to shelter” obligation, NYC has provided shelter for migrants by converting hotels, office buildings, and even tents, into make-shift lodging designed for temporary stay. Within a year, anti-immigrant rhetoric from Mayor Eric Adams sparked activism from both immigrant rights organizations and long-term residents who don’t want migrant shelters in their neighborhoods. These shelters lack the necessary food, privacy, social services, and structure that is owed to homeless residents …

The Unholy Matrimony: Russia And Violent Non-State Actors, Justin Castro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Russia’s contemporary relationship with violent non-state actors has been at the forefront of news due to the conflict in Ukraine. Despite the international shock at this phenomenon, this is an age-old practice for Russia. Since the 17^th century, the Russian state has developed a strategy of utilizing violent non-state actors in order to achieve its geopolitical objectives that consist of expanding its territory, extending its influence abroad, and weakening the capabilities of adversaries. While this strategy seems clear-cut, it contains a rich history of Russia trying to manage its relationship with non-state actors from a position of weakness and …

Agents Of Alignment: Political Realignment As Social Movement Strategy, Matthew Miles Goodrich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The fields of social movement studies and political realignment theory do not often overlap in political science. But by conceiving of realignment as a strategy of social movements, this paper reveals terrain in the political struggle that conventional scholarship can miss. I draw from two historical case studies – the industrial labor movement in the 1930s and the civil rights movement in Mississippi the 1960s – to explore how social movement strategists fought to shape the contours of emerging political orders to achieve their goals. I find that the labor movement pursued a reciprocal strategy of alignment with the Democratic …

A Symbol For The Masses: Sergei Chakhotin And The Modern Crisis Of Propaganda, Benjamin J. Diehl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an intellectual biography of Sergei Chakhotin, a Russian biologist whose most famous work, The Rape of the Masses (1939), represented an insightful, pioneering analysis of modern propaganda as it arose during Europe’s “Age of Catastrophe” (1914-1945). In this work and others, Chakhotin used the psychological theories of Ivan Pavlov to develop a system of thought that emphasized the scientific possibilities and political inevitability of mass conditioning through propaganda. In addition to Pavlov’s theory, Chakhotin also used other intellectual frameworks, such as Taylorism and microbiology, to buttress his own firsthand experience during World War I, the Russian Revolution, …

Modeling Depressive Patterns In Italian Discourse: Insights From Natural Language Processing, Annapia Borraccino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Depression does not always speak in obvious ways. It often hides in silence, in brief pauses, and in the quiet texture of language. While the prosodic and linguistic characteristics of depression have been extensively studied in English and other languages, they remain underexplored in Italian, with this being a first focused analysis. This study investigates how depression manifests in the speech of Italian speakers, using transcriptions from a clinical corpus. Drawing on emotional, structural, and cognitive-linguistic features, including first person verb use, sentence complexity, verb tense, and negation, the study evaluates how these markers differ between individuals with and without …

Cuny In The News: A History Of Reporting On The Humanities At The City University Of New York, Jacqueline R. Cahill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project compiles newspaper articles concerning humanities at the City University of New York, placing them on a timeline to establish patterns and changes within media reporting and public perception. The archival research of this project explores four distinct eras, grouped around major events in the history of the university: 1961-1971, for the founding of the university and open admissions struggle; 1980-1990, for the response to the ‘70s fiscal crisis and introduction of the Board of Trustees; 2000-2010 for the post-open admissions era and the centralization of CUNY; and 2020-present, for COVID and a new fight for racial equity. Examining …

Hope By A Thousand Cuts: Fashion Ethics From Cutting Fabric To Cutting A Fashion Film, Sarah G. Porterfield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I conducted an experiment during which I learned to sew, created a clothing collection, and wore nothing but my collection for a month. Additionally, I documented my collection and the process in a fashion film. The goal of my experiment was to investigate fashion ethics. To gain a greater understanding of the underlying theories that fashion materializes and to grasp their ethical implications better, I studied the texts of fashion theorists such as Marx, Barthes, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Butler, Benjamin, and Merleau-Ponty throughout my experiment. Therefore, I gained insight into many aspects of fashion ethics, from the beginning stages …

Audiologic Management Of Individuals With Advanced Cochlear Otosclerosis: A Systematic Review, Sophie Silvermintz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This systematic review evaluates the efficacy and outcomes of cochlear implantation (CI) in adults diagnosed with far-advanced cochlear otosclerosis. This synthesis of audiological outcomes, surgical complexities, and patient-reported quality-of-life (QoL) measures is the first systematic analysis of peer-reviewed studies on this topic. By completing a comprehensive analysis of CI's viability in managing severe-to-profound mixed or sensorineural hearing loss attributed to CO, it is anticipated that CI will be considered an option for persons experiencing the significant communication challenges presented by CO when traditional approaches to management have been ineffective.

Eleven peer-reviewed articles met the inclusion criteria, examining key outcomes including …

Path Dependency And The Politics Of U.S. Health Reform, Sophia Spadafore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the impact of path dependency on health reform efforts in the United States, specifically analyzing how past policy decisions constrain subsequent reform possibilities. Utilizing the theoretical framework of historical institutionalism, the study investigates two significant cases—the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 and the The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010—to illustrate how successful healthcare reforms embed institutional arrangements that limit future policy innovation. Through a comparative case study approach grounded in legislative records, historical texts, and scholarly analyses, the research highlights that major healthcare reforms in the U.S. have consistently been structured …

The Invisible Hand Of Networked Repression, Thuy Anh Tran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

U.S. history is awash with contentious episodes involving a legion of governmental and non-governmental actors operating through an array of means and arenas to destroy the political opposition. Yet, there has been little systematic examination in the repression literature of how and why repressive efforts proliferate so far beyond the police, military, and intelligence agencies tasked and equipped to preserve the existing order. This dissertation presents a novel framework for studying the relational basis of repression—particularly as it is organized, mobilized, and extended through a networked social structure. Social network analysis and interpretive case studies are conducted on two historical …

Individual, Social, And Environmental Factors Associated With Patterns Of Parasitic Infection In Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus Imitator), Megan C. Henriquez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Parasites, and the infectious diseases they carry, are thought to have significantly impacted our evolutionary trajectory for millennia. Exploring how parasites are acquired and transmitted by their hosts in wild, natural populations is integral to understanding how similar processes may have shaped host-parasite co-evolutionary relationships over time. However, parasitological studies in humans and in non-human primates have produced inconsistent results, highlighting the dynamic, nuanced, and unique relationships individual parasites have with their hosts. These relationships are largely regulated by variation in factors at host, social, and environmental levels. Characteristics unique to the host (e.g., age and sex), factors pertaining to …

Counter-Hegemony In The Captive State: Recasting Katrina’S Carceral Legacy Through Conjuncture, Joseph S. Muratore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis traces the historical development and contemporary manifestations of carceral power in Louisiana, arguing that racialized systems of control—from slavery and convict leasing to mass incarceration—have been sustained through shifting alliances of political and economic elites. Using The Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC) and its exhibit Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration as a foundational timeline, this study demonstrates how Bourbonism forged a regional bloc that institutionalized racial domination through incarceration and labor exploitation, later reconstituted through neoliberal policies of abandonment, privatization, and militarization. I chose to focus on Hurricane Katrina because its aftermath reflects many …

The Giants Of Coercion: Major Powers And The Mobilization Of Global Sanctions Coalitions, Louis Charbonneau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the conditions under which sanctions-sending states can successfully mobilize broad international support for coercive measures on a target state for violating international security norms. Using the case of international sanctions on Iran from 2006 to 2016, I develop a theory of how sanctions senders mobilize support for, and cooperation with, coercive measures on target states. The theory has two parts. First, states seeking international sanctions against a target with broad participation and support need unity and cooperation on the part of major powers in the international system. Second, securing the unity and cooperation of major powers makes …

Guardians Of The Iranian Revolution: Clerical Authority, Bonyads, And The Irgc In Iran's Economic Landscape, Chase M. Toscano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the ideological and institutional foundations of Iran's post-revolutionary political economy, focusing on the triumvirate of clerical authority, bonyads (charitable foundations), and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Drawing on Kevan Harris’s “subcontractor state” framework, this study argues that Iran’s political economy is simultaneously a decentralized yet state-dominated system, where semi-public institutions like the bonyads and the IRGC act as key subcontractors, enabling the Islamic Republic to further economic development and circumventing Western sanctions. This analysis examines the development of Iran’s political economy from the 1979 revolution to identify the influence of left-wing Islamic ideologues like Ali Shariati …

Issues Of Religious Dominance: The Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif And The Western Wall At The Center Of Islam, Judaism, And Failing British Mandatory Responses (1917-1931), Kyra Young

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper explores how religious space and symbolism became central to Arab and Jewish nationalist identities in Mandatory Palestine, focusing on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and the Western Wall during the transition from Ottoman to British rule. It argues that the collapse of Ottoman sovereignty, alongside British support for a Jewish national home, transformed Islamic institutions into arenas for political expression. Muslim notables, particularly the Husayni family, strategically engaged with British colonial notions of “tradition” to reassert influence, exemplified by the politicization of the Nebi Musa festival. At the same time, Zionism—both political secular and religious—began to attach renewed …

A Reconstruction Of The Homeric Tradition In Early Greece, Aidan F. Hoey

Student Theses

This thesis discusses the centuries-long historiographical debate that is known to us as the Homeric Question. The identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the dating from when the Homeric epic poems were composed, the Homeric diction, and the historicity of the Trojan War has puzzled scholars since Antiquity. Only by the twentieth century, scholars Milman Parry and Albert Lord proved that the Iliad and Odyssey were orally composed. How the written form of the Homeric epic poems came about has become even more of a historiographic puzzle than it has been previously. Building off the …

A Broken Glass And Its Pieces: The Psychological Impact On Children In Gaza, Qamar Bazar

Publications and Research

This review article is on the psychological effects of ongoing violence on children living in Gaza through a trauma-informed approach to bring together research from academic articles, clinical studies, and journalistic reports published between 2023 and 2025. Based on the sources selected, their focus is on children’s mental health and whether they came from trusted and credible platforms. Rather than just summarizing the research, the paper uses relevant sources to understand how distress shows up in children with mental health struggles such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dissociative amnesia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Questions like how they are related to …

An Antidote To Populist Ill-Rule? Polycentricity, And Excess Mortality In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Michael Lee

Publications and Research

It has often proven difficult for scholars of populist governance to untangle the policy results produced by populist governments from the conditions that might lead voters to elect populist leaders. The COVID-19 pandemic – an exogenous event occurring amidst the rise of populist governments to power in many of the world’s democracies – offers a unique window into populist crisis management. Are populists less effective crisis managers when the stakes are high? And if so, what factors might mitigate populist ill-rule? In this paper I present evidence that populist-led governments experienced greater levels of excess mortality in the COVID-19 pandemic …

Representation Of African Countries And Sino-Africa Relations In Chinese Newspapers, Zheng Zhu

Publications and Research

China’s neocolonialist expansion and domination in African continent has been well documented and extensively studied by scholars across various fields and disciplines. But what these studies didn’t pay attention to, or what they failed to pay enough attention to, was the ways this type of neo-colonialist exploitation was legitimated and justified by the powerful media outlets that support the Chinese government and have strong impact on public perceptions of the domestic and global situations. This research project aims to fill that gap by examining three Chinese newspapers’ coverage of African countries and their complex business relations with the Chinese government. …

Swk 365: Social Work Practice Iii: Communities & Organizations, Sonia Brown

Open Educational Resources

Social Work Practice with Communities and Organization is the third of three foundation courses in social work practice. The social work practice sequence provides an introduction to the basic theory and methods of generalist social work practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations and communities. As a preparation for practice in the field, this third course emphasizes practice with organizations, neighborhoods and communities. Change strategies such as social action, legislative policy, citizen participation, advocacy and service development are explored. All case material is studied within the context of the values of the social work profession and the recognition of the importance …

Exposure To And Impact Of Unhealthy Food Marketing On Adolescents And Young Adults: A Narrative Review And Research Agenda, Nicholas Freudenberg, Rositsa Ilieva

Publications and Research

Consumption of unhealthy food has become a leading cause of premature deaths and preventable illnesses around the world. Research shows that marketing by the companies that produce, distribute, and sell unhealthy foods and beverages is associated with increased consumption of these products. To date, however, limited research has focused on the cumulative exposure and impact of various modes of marketing employed to reach distinct populations. In this narrative review, we summarize 25 years of scientific evidence and findings from 108 empirical studies and 19 systematic and scoping reviews of various forms of unhealthy food marketing to adolescents (aged 13 to …

New York City Misses The Exit To Traffic Safety, Joseph Caffrey

Capstones

New York City Misses the Exit to Traffic Safety investigates New York City’s mounting traffic violence crisis through the lens of a devastating crash that killed a Brooklyn mother and her two daughters. It examines the city’s inconsistent enforcement of reckless driving and the failure of the Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program (DVAP), which aimed to reform recidivist speeders. The piece investigates the imperfections of Vision Zero, public backlash to automated enforcement, and the broader failure to prevent recidivist speeding. It also explores policy alternatives like Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), highlighting legislative efforts to revive accountability and save lives, while advocating …

Investigating Potential Sugar-Related Uncertainties In A Proxy For Ancient Co2, Liam Cooper

Student Theses and Dissertations

The ε_p proxy for ancient pCO₂ can potentially estimate ancient pCO₂ as from the evolution of rubisco-based photosynthesis, using the difference in stable carbon isotope ratios (δ¹³C) between fixed and inorganic carbon, assuming this difference is proportional to pCO₂. This study aims to address uncertainty with the use of photosynthetic microbes in proxies for ancient pCO₂. While previous studies address uncertainties related to the δ¹³C of initial fixed photosynthate (e.g., growth rate), we aim to address the effects of downstream carbon allocation. Specifically, if a significant fraction of fixed …

Lobbying Laws And Campaign Finance: Shaping The Trajectory Of Post-2008 Financial Reforms, Jessica Plepi

Student Theses and Dissertations

Following the 2008 financial crisis, the United States enacted financial crisis reforms, particularly the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, to prevent future failures and enhance regulatory oversight of financial corporations. However, financial institutions pushed back against these reforms by utilizing lobbying and campaign finance mechanisms to weaken key provisions. Their efforts increased following the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which allowed unlimited corporate spending. This thesis argues that financial corporations significantly weakened key provisions of post-2008 financial reforms through lobbying efforts and campaign finance. Through a case study of JPMorgan Chase, …

The Hecks Angels: A Look At The City Of New York's Electric Motorcycle Community, Mckenzie A. Corey

Capstones

Motorcycles are a common mode of transportation globally, but within the U.S., they tend to imply a certain demeanor—maybe someone who's brash or a risk taker. I mean, it makes sense. You've got to be a bit daring to ride off into the sunset on something that screams when it shifts gears and begs to be revved at a red light. But in New York City electric motorcycle enthusiasts appear to have slapped a fresh coat of paint on the old concept of what it means to live a life on two wheels.

Drone Strikes In Pakistan, Muhammad Shumail

Capstones

my capstone maps all the drone strikes in Pakistan from 2004 to 2018. it show how many drone strikes were conducted during each president tenure and how many civilians were killed.

https://techman96.github.io/drone-strikes/

Improving Healthcare Access Among Hunter College Students – Suggestions For A Hunter College Student Health Center, Jacob Villorente

Publications and Research

This study investigates disparities in healthcare access among students at CUNY Hunter College, an urban public university in Manhattan serving over 22,000 students. 89% of Hunter students receive financial aid, with 67% of students receiving Pell grants. Hunter College only offers limited health services, primarily short-term mental health counseling and wellness workshops. A cross-sectional survey (n = 33) assessed insurance status, coverage (dental, vision, psychiatric), access barriers (e.g., transportation), mental health symptoms, and impacts to academia. While 69.7% of respondents reported comprehensive insurance, students with public insurance (Medicaid, Medicare) experienced substantially higher access barriers than those with employer-sponsored plans and …