Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating Differences In Drink Refusal Training And Posttreatment Outcomes In Women In Individual Alcohol Treatment, Rosa Munoz

Psychology ETDs

This study sought to establish the topography of drink refusal behaviors clients engage in while undergoing manual-guided Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD). Prior research has demonstrated that clients who receive specific skills training on how to assertively refuse drinks are less likely to relapse. Behavioral coding has been used previously to explore in-session behaviors by both client and therapist. Using this methodology, a coding manual (Drink Refusal and Motivation-Alcohol; DRAM-A) was developed for the present study. We sought to explore the relationship between differential types of drink refusal behaviors uttered by clients receiving treatment for AUD …

Plurality Through Film: Subjectivity In Yoko Tawada's Das Nackte Auge, Anna M. Adams

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis undertakes an examination of the subject formation of the nameless protagonist and first-person narrator of Yoko Tawada’s novel, Das nackte Auge. Situated and framed by poststructuralist theorists such as Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, this thesis argues that the protagonist’s plurality of subject positions is established through her encounters with film, particularly in relation to the French actress Catherine Deneuve, in a process that reveals the overlapping networks of social, historical, and political structures that intersect to express her subjectivity as formed under systemic racism and sexism. Tawada’s novel provides an opportunity to examine how the protagonist …

Full Issue (Spring 2018)

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

No abstract provided.

Language Ideology, Policy And Planning In Peru (Book Review), Yuliana H. Kenfield

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

No abstract provided.

Penning Her Way To Power: Feminism And Writing In Saudi Women’S Efl Classrooms, Dania Ammar

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

In this literature review, I highlight the need for investing in the second-language (L2) writing classroom as a platform for critical literacy. Namely, I hone in on the context of L2 women writers in Saudi Arabia. As I argue for a feminist pedagogy for teaching L2 writing in this context, I emphasize writing as a tool of “languaging,” define feminism, and explain its significance in relation to education, women rights, and waves of social change in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, situating this paper in the field composition, I survey the development of concepts relevant to empowerment through writing in feminist first-language …

Understanding Intersectionality To Promote Social Justice In Educational Leadership: Review Of Jcel Cases, Ericka Roland

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

This qualitative study examined how intersectionality is treated in the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership’s (JCEL) 2016 special issue. Guided by intersectionality and intersectional pedagogy framework, a qualitative content analysis (QCA) was conducted on all parts of six pedagogical cases. There were three major findings: (1) an additive approach was taken, (2) there was an unclear connection between theory and practice, and (3) there was minimal attention given to the role of agency in social justice leadership. Pedagogical cases rooted in the theoretical framework of intersectionality prompts social justice leadership that uncovers structural and systemic power relations to enact …

The Support Needs Of First Generation Immigrant Families With Sons And Daughters With Disabilities, George Jacob

Special Education ETDs

This study examined the support needs of four first generation immigrant families with sons and daughters with disabilities from a city in the South West of the United States and gave them a voice to add to the knowledge base that can inform the development of supports and policies for families. Parents talked about their separation from extended families and being alone in an unfamiliar country without knowledge and information on how to raise a child with a disability. Spouse and children were the closest forms of support, but for a single parent, the needs multiplied. All families shared the …

Negotiating Culture In Africa: A Critical Analysis Of Organizational Discourse In Ghana, Eric Karikari

Communication ETDs

Organizational culture is a concept that is theoretically contested, particularly within critical approaches to communication. However, it is a highly crucial area of research which has symbolic and material implications for individuals, organizations and communities. This study contributes to the conversation about how organizational culture is constituted by interrogating the forces at play in this constitution. One of such forces is neoliberalism, which operates by subsuming all organizational practices under the umbrella of market value. The study takes a cultural materialist approach to organizational culture through the analysis of discourse at the National Communications Authority (NCA) in Ghana.

The NCA …

Blackdom: Interpreting The Hidden History Of New Mexico's Black Town, Austin J. Miller

History ETDs

This master’s thesis recovers the history of Blackdom, New Mexico. Founded by an African American family from Georgia, Blackdom is a ghost town that existed in the early decades of the twentieth century near Roswell, New Mexico. Blackdom was initially imagined as both a refuge from the hostilities of Jim Crow society and as a for-profit enterprise. Entanglement in land-fraud scandals hindered the town’s early development, but Blackdom eventually grew to nearly three hundred residents, with its own school, Baptist church, post office, and general store. Blackdom settlers practiced a variety of agricultural methods, including dry farming and irrigation from …

Automated Development Of Semantic Data Models Using Scientific Publications, Martha O. Perez-Arriaga

Computer Science ETDs

The traditional methods for analyzing information in digital documents have evolved with the ever-increasing volume of data. Some challenges in analyzing scientific publications include the lack of a unified vocabulary and a defined context, different standards and formats in presenting information, various types of data, and diverse areas of knowledge. These challenges hinder detecting, understanding, comparing, sharing, and querying information rapidly.

I design a dynamic conceptual data model with common elements in publications from any domain, such as context, metadata, and tables. To enhance the models, I use related definitions contained in ontologies and the Internet. Therefore, this dissertation generates …

Realidades Culturales De Argentina: Demystifying (Trans)National Ideologies In Study Abroad Curriculum, Matthew Hoeg

Communication ETDs

The study focused on discourses in a study abroad textbook titled Realidades Culturales de Argentina which was designed for students from the United States studying abroad in Argentina. The aim was to understand what educational texts in (trans)national spaces such as study abroad programs, are expecting of students in relation to communicative practices that extend beyond language learning. The study used a critical discourse analysis approach to deconstruct first the expectations of the students and second how these expectations worked in the (re)construction of (trans)national ideologies. Examining four recurring discursive practices in the textbook demonstrated that students were expected to …

Automatic Conversation Review For Intelligent Virtual Assistants, Ian R. Beaver

Computer Science ETDs

When reviewing the performance of Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs), it is desirable to prioritize conversations involving misunderstood human inputs. These conversations uncover error in natural language understanding and help prioritize and expedite improvements to the IVA. As human reviewer time is valuable and manual analysis is time consuming, prioritizing the conversations where misunderstanding has likely occurred reduces costs and speeds improvement. A system for measuring the posthoc risk of missed intent associated with a single human input is presented. Numerous indicators of risk are explored and implemented. These indicators are combined using various means and evaluated on real world data. …

Thinking With Images, Ed Sarkis

Philosophy ETDs

This thesis argues that images are necessary for thinking. If this is true then the nature of images needs to be understood. The problem with many accounts of perception is assuming that representing what we see is a matter of accurate depiction. The problem is solved by attending to the skills of visual discernment rather than judgments about those perceptions. My approach is both historical and analytic. Aristotle, Hume, and Wittgenstein give accounts of perception which are critically discussed. The notion that an image is a copy is rejected by showing how complicated and indeterminate that relation is. Images have …

"Health Is An Achoot Beat": Factors Influencing Pakistani Journalists' Coverage Of Polio Vaccination, Sayyed Fawad Ali Shah

Communication ETDs

Pakistan is one of the three countries where polio remained endemic in 2017—the other two being Afghanistan and Nigeria. The highest number of polio cases, 15, was recorded in Pakistan in 2016. A majority of the polio cases emerged among the ethnically Pakhtun population living in Pakhtunkhwa, FATA (the Federally Administered Tribal Areas), and Karachi, a metropolitan city in the Sindh province where Pakhtun immigrants from Pakhtunkhwa and FATA work and live. The resistance to polio vaccination among Pakhtuns has been associated with several factors, including a lack of knowledge about polio and anti-polio vaccine, the ongoing “war on terror,” …

On Rugina’S System Of Thought, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

This article investigates Rugina's orientation table and gives particular examples for several of its seven models. Leon Walras's Economics of Stable Equilibrium and Keynes's Economics of Disequilibrium are combined in Rugina's orientation table in systems which are s percent stable and 100 ÿ s percent unstable, where s may be 100, 95, 65, 50, 35, 5, and 0. Classical logic and modern logic are united in Rugina's integrated logic, and then generalized in neutrosophic logic.

Early Alert Of At-Risk Students: An Ontology-Driven Framework, Elias S. Lopez

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

As higher education continues to adapt to the constantly shifting conditions that society places on institutions, the enigma of student attrition continues to trouble universities. Early alerts for students who are at-risk academically have been introduced as a method for solving student attrition at these institutions. Early alert systems are designed to provide students who are academically at-risk a prompt indication so that they may correct their performance and make progress towards successful semester completion. Many early alert systems have been introduced and implemented at various institutions with varying levels of success. Currently, early alert systems employ different techniques for …

El Español En El Pueblo Ngäbe. Factores Fonológicos Y Morfológicos, Kafda I. Vergara Esturaín

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This study examines phonological and morphological features involved in the release of plural marking –s in nominal phrases of Spanish as a second language (L2). The linguistic variety belongs to Spanish spoken by members of the Ngäbe pueblo of Panama.

Despite the preference of final /s/ deletion in Panamanian Spanish, morphology seems to activate the production of plural marking –s in certain nominal phrases. Meanwhile, other circumstances stimulating the application of alternative strategies for plural marks are detected.

This study also includes questions about the influence of the first language (L1), particularly by comparing Ngäbere and Spanish nominal phrases. It …

Fresa Style In Mexico: Sociolinguistic Stereotypes And The Variability Of Social Meanings, Rebeca Martinez Gomez

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation examines the flexibility in the social meanings of sociolinguistic stereotypes and how linguistic and non-linguistic information affect these meanings. The investigation consists of four empirical studies surrounding the case of fresas in Mexico –members of the upper class that are perceived as using a unique linguistic style.

Study 1 investigates the linguistic and non-linguistic characteristics associated with the fresa stereotype. Through a qualitative analysis of 64 webpages and 3 performances of the style, it is shown that fresasare perceived as the counterpart of another construct, nacos,and that their linguistic style is linked to English due to …

Strange Labor: Toward The Non-Expression Of Feelings Themselves, Nevarez G. Encinias

Theatre & Dance ETDs

This essay accompanies the researcher’s Master of Fine Arts thesis concert, Sensaciones y emociones (performed on September 5 and 6, 2017). It describes how he employed his training as a flamenco dancer to choreographically model three non-expressive interactions with three discrete feelings in the performances of this concert. The essay outlines the ways in which the researcher used his art practice to imagine alternative strategies for relating to emotions and sensations, as phenomena that might put a body in motion, but that do not always or necessarily travel from inside of a feeling subject, outward, in an act commonly called …

Holding On/Letting Go: Situating Trauma And Memory In Theatrical Spaces, Caroline T. Graham

Theatre & Dance ETDs

In this essay, I review my development as a playwright in the MFA Dramatic Writing program and examine the shifting, overlapping goals of playwright-as-educator and playwright-as-entertainer. In Part One, I position my academic exploration of trauma in relation to ethics in journalism, embodied knowledge, and intersectional feminism and outline my creative experiments in staging trauma through the process of witnessing, retelling, and abstraction. In Part Two, I detail the artistic and personal roots of my dissertation play, The Great Maverick Adventure of 2007, and the structural and dramaturgical tools I employed to rebuild a sense of play and theatricality …

Teachers’ Professional Identity Construction: A Narrative Inquiry Of Non-Native English Speaking Teachers In Saudi Arabia, Mustafa Abdo Hersi

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This qualitative study examineshow five in-service male non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) constructed and negotiated their professional identity as teachers to make meaning of their lived experiences in an EFL milieu, a Saudi Arabian university. The study also explores the challenges related to NNESTs’ teaching lives and how they negotiated them as they constructed their professional identities. I approached the studied phenomena by employing a narrative inquiry method. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and an autobiography. The study draws on Clandinin and Connelly’s framework of three-dimensional space (temporality, sociality, and place), Bourdieu’s theory of forms of capital,and Gee’s …

Historical Traditions And Critical Perspectives: An Exploration Of The Textual And Pedagogical Choices Of Four Language Arts Teachers In An Urban, Diverse Secondary School, Annmarie L. Sheahan

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Even as current critical research in the teaching of English calls for a widening of traditional secondary texts and curricula choices, the presence of certain district, local, and state policies continue to permeate classrooms in extensive and oppressive ways that have limited the literature, the instructional strategies, and the autonomy that teachers bring into educational spaces. This qualitative study examines the pedagogical choices of four secondary language arts teachers within the framework of both historical and critical perspectives on the teaching of literature and within the realities of a high-stakes, evaluative teaching environment. Utilizing participatory action research (PAR) and collaborative …

The Fight For Historical Representation And Accuracy: Statues Of The Confederacy, Ashley R. Koger

2018 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Drama As Dream: Sophoclean Tragedy And The Cult Of Asclepius, Molly C. Mata

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis explores tragic drama as a corresponding ritual to the incubation ritual in the cult of Asclepius and theorizes that this ritual is psychologically cathartic and healing. I argue that in Ajax and Philoctetes, Sophocles marks this cathartic ritual through nosological language, setting, and social context. In my first chapter, I explore Sophocles’ use of the language of madness (mania) and illness (nosos) in Ajax to show the exacerbation of the audience’s psychological state. Next, I show that catharsis is achieved through the negotiation and subsequent burial of Ajax. In my second chapter, I argue that Sophocles uses both …

Federalism And The State Police Power: Why Immigration And Customs Enforcement Must Stay Away From State Courthouses, George Bach

Faculty Scholarship

The Trump Administration’s rhetoric and increased immigration enforcement actions have raised the level of fear in immigrant communities. The increased enforcement has included having United States Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents appear at state and local courthouses to detain undocumented immigrants when they arrive for court. This presence has had an adverse effect on domestic violence victims who are immigrants, as they fear encountering immigrations officials at the courthouse. In El Paso, for example, agents detained a woman who was bringing a case of domestic violence against her abuser. There were claims that ICE was tipped off about the …

'Birth Control Was Just A Part Of It": The Santa Fe Maternal Health Center, 1937-1996, Lena Mcquade

New Mexico Historical Review

No abstract provided.

Hls 200: A Latina's Story About The Bicentennial, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

This essay sketches an arc from my childhood to being an Harvard Law School student to my academic work and professional commitments as a law professor and an alumna of Harvard Law School, working to increase access and success in the legal and medical professions for students and faculty of color. I compare aspects of legal and medical education using demographic data as well as some observations about how diverse faculty have transformed the two professions in their respective approaches to and rationales for diversifying the professions and examine the work being done by diverse faculty in law and health. …

Brief For Professors, Lamar, Archer & Cofrin, Llp V. R. Scott Appling As Amicus Curiae, Laura Spitz

Faculty Scholarship

This brief is concerned with the Petitioner’s misinterpretation of §523(a)(2) of the United States Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. §101, et seq., which wrongly maintains that a false oral statement describing a single asset gives rise to a non-dischargeable debt. This brief shows Congress understood that §523(a)(2) simply re-enacted statutory language already having a completely settled understanding that a statement about a single asset was a “statement respecting financial condition” which must be in writing in order to give rise to a nondischargeable debt. This brief also submits that even if, arguendo, Petitioner were correct that a statement respecting financial condition …

International Muslim Students Within A Globalized Educational Context, Noha Ghali

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

While previous research has revealed and documented the difficulties that international students and international Muslim students face when studying abroad, it fails to critically study and discuss the students’ perception of reasons behind these difficulties. The main aim of this study is to focus on international Muslim students and explore their social and academic experiences and challenges in a globalized educational context. Another aim is to investigate international Muslim students’ perceived reasons behind the challenges they meet, and how they negotiate such challenges. The study reviews the literature on international Muslim students in western higher education to highlight the gap …

Summary Of The Special Issue “Neutrosophic Information Theory And Applications” At “Information” Journal, Florentin Smarandache, Jun Ye

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

Over a period of seven months (August 2017–February 2018), the Special Issue dedicated to “Neutrosophic Information Theory and Applications” by the “Information” journal (ISSN 2078-2489), located in Basel, Switzerland, was a success. The Guest Editors, Prof. Dr. Florentin Smarandache from the University of New Mexico (USA) and Prof. Dr. Jun Ye from the Shaoxing University (China), were happy to select—helped by a team of neutrosophic reviewers from around the world, and by the “Information” journal editors themselves—and publish twelve important neutrosophic papers, authored by 27 authors and coauthors. There were a variety of neutrosophic topics studied and used by the …