Digital Commons Network^™

Tears, Trauma And Transformation: Central American Mothers' Experiences Of Violence, Migration And Family Reunification, Sandra B. Castro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the experiences of migration, separation, and reunification of transnational mothers from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala and their children. Drawing on data collected from 25 mothers living and working on Long Island, New York who migrated to the US during four periods from 1976-2019 and whose children returned to them, sometimes years later. My findings suggest that transnational mothering is an experience marked by multiple forms of structural, institutional, and interpersonal violence, along with the commitment to sacrifice for their children. Taken together, transnational mothers operated within a form of “compounded disadvantage” (Abrego, 2014) due to their …

The Integration Of Art, Architecture, And Identity: Alfred Kastner, Louis Kahn, And Ben Shahn At Jersey Homesteads, Daniel S. Palmer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the New Deal, the United States government created the Jersey Homesteads co-operative in order to help a group of Jewish immigrant garment workers from New York City during the economic downturn of the Great Depression. This dissertation examines how a 1930s utopian enclave utilized modernist art and architecture to express the radical back-to-the-land agrarian idealism and socialist ideology of its settlers. The flat-roofed, concrete buildings that housed these Jewish garment workers were designed by German architect Alfred Kastner (1900-1975), with his then unknown assistant Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974). These unornamented, functionalist buildings adapted avant-garde European architectural forms into an …

Displacing The Border: Refugees, Law, And Geography In Turkey, Mert Peksen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How do the function, the location, and the form of contemporary borders change in the face of large-scale refugee mobilities? My dissertation project addresses this question in the unique political-geographic context of Turkey. I examine border construction at different geographic scales and its functions in everyday life. In contrast to the conventional understanding of the border as a line separating countries from each other, I approach it as a multi- and cross-scalar regime which encompasses national and transnational places, people, documents, and practices. As such, the border transcends state contours and exists at multiple simultaneous scales, ranging from transnational and …

Counterstories Of Black High School Students And Graduates Of Nyc Independent Schools: A Narrative Case Study, Kahdeidra M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public youth resistance movements in 2019 and 2020 exposed the entrenchment of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and classism across New York City independent schools (NYCIS). In order to support the imminent need for schools to provide effective diversity, inclusion, and equity supports that address broad issues of school climate, relationships, and pedagogy, there is a need to better understand the specific, hyperlocal experiences of Black/African Descendant (BAD) students, who occupy several unique, unexplored spaces in educational research. The following four research questions helped to conceptualize the experiences that support and hinder the academic success and long term well-being of BAD students …

Indian Classical Music In The New York Metropolitan Area: The Development Of A Transnational Ecosystem, Andre Fludd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the development of North and South Indian classical music communities in the New York metropolitan area from the mid-20^th century to the present. In this investigation, I primarily focus on local musicians from diverse backgrounds and communities rather than internationally recognized stars. In the instances where I discuss famous musicians such as Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain, I focus on how they impacted New York metropolitan area communities particularly and what their success can teach about international Indian classical music careers. The dissertation is organized chronologically, and I highlight vital people, non-profit organizations, historical moments, and …

The Logic Of The Land: The Agrarian Roots Of Uneven Development In Brazil, Chris Carlson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to explain the highly uneven pattern of economic development in Brazil during the 20^th century. Stark development differences between the northern and southern regions of the country have long been a problem of concern to scholars and policymakers and have generated a number of studies over the years. However, none of these have gotten to the root of the problem, and state policy has never adequately addressed the regional disparities. This study puts forth a new theory of uneven development based on the different ways that agricultural production has come to be organized in different parts …

Prophecy, Emanation, And The Mediterranean Middle Ages, Alberto Gelmi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the notion of prophecy as a semiotic construct in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on a chronological span that runs from Late Antiquity to the 14^th century. It argues that theories of prophecy offer useful insights in the domain of rhetoric and not just in epistemology, as scholarship has predominantly contended. The first two chapters survey the trendsetting work of Augustine, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Maimonides, arguing that their semiotic angle on prophecy depends on a structural affinity with the metaphysical template of emanationism as formulated by Plotinus and Proclus, whose teachings went often misrepresented or …

Challenges Of Repatriation: Asante Artifacts At The American Museum Of Natural History, Abdul-Alim Farook

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Inspired by calls for the repatriation of famous artifacts like the Benin Bronzes and the Elgin Marbles, for this capstone project, I have analyzed and catalogued 250 sampled Asante artifacts at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Through this analysis, I discuss the many ways museums in North America acquired their collections. By doing so, I explore the difficulties that arise in debates surrounding repatriation due to the manner in which these artifacts were acquired. I argue that due to the many different types of donors of the Asante artifacts to the American Museum of Natural History, the Asante …

Skin Worlds: Black And Indigenous Science Fiction Theorizing Since The 1970s, Lou Cornum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation unfolds along two trajectories, the first following from an ascendant interest in minoritarian traditions in speculative and science fiction and the second following the reiterative conversations across Black and Indigenous Studies. Science fiction theorizing is introduced as a frame for thinking these two trajectories together, with science fiction texts by authors Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, Gerald Vizenor, Leslie Marmon Silko and Samuel Delany providing a paraliterary mode of imagining the planetary from which to understand the interconnected processes of settler colonialism and trans-Atlantic slavery. Science Fiction theorizing across these texts disrupts notions of linear progressive time, human/alien boundaries, …

From Poor Campesinos To Tortilla Kings: Mexican Migrant Elites, Yesenia Ruiz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes a recent transnational Mexican migrant elite—a new social and economic group that emerged not from established elites or from privileged backgrounds, but from poor campesino families. Members of this group migrated to the U.S. from Mexico during the 1980s. The majority of these (male) entrepreneur migrants crossed the border as mojados without passports or money. Over a period of thirty years, these migrants have accumulated an unprecedented amount of wealth and, thereby, gain prestige and status within their communities. Successful in both the US and Mexico, these entrepreneurs are distinct from other transnational migrant groups. They have …

Italian Psyche And Society: Politics And Networks In Italian Mind And Brain Science And Medicine, 1919–1939, Sultana Banulescu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation argues that in interwar Italy the intellectual landscape of the mind and brain sciences, often marked by a state of creative turmoil, was as much a political and cultural enterprise as a scientific one. The impact of these sciences was far-reaching, as were the consequences of these scientists’ persecution by – and in some cases collaboration with – the Fascist regime. My dissertation investigates the mechanisms through which scientific inquiry and political ambition interfaced; and how research and ideology shaped one another, often taking the form of national and transnational networks of creativity and patronage. To elucidate such …

Environmental Cues And The Sociospatial Imaginary: An Examination Of Spatial Perception And Meaning-Making In A Gentrifying Neighborhood, Todd Levon Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What could be more ordinary or pedestrian than two people walking down an urban street and talking about what we see and what we make of it? Yet this simple, quotidian act of walking a street—seeing, perceiving and experiencing physical spaces, places and objects—and making meaning of what is encountered, is the basis of my dissertation. It is also my basis for claiming that I have learned a great deal—and much unexpectedly—about how differently different people see and interpret the urban streetscape. What are the various environmental cues that stand out to different individuals? What are the psychosocial imaginaries that …

Points Of Reference: Humanities Content For Media Studies, Carolyn A. Mcdonough

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Points of Reference: Humanities Content for Media Studies is a proposed research method designed for students to help them analyze humanities content encountered in undergraduate media studies courses, specifically within commercial advertising. The project is informed by Critical Theory developed by The Frankfurt School as well as by contemporary digital humanities scholars. Points of Reference theorizes a digital pedagogical training tool as a browsing gallery that helps student separate humanities references embedded into media, and to contravene the dominance of Google Search.

Critical Climates: Stimmung, Voice And Mythopoesis In German Literature From 1950–1989, Marc Cesar Rickenbach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Critical Climates examines the interest in myth among a number of literary figures from 1950 to 1989 in relation to the concurrent re-emergence of the German aesthetic concept of Stimmung. At once referring to atmosphere, milieu, mood, disposition and harmony, while carrying along its root Stimme, or voice, this dissertation shows how Stimmung informed a literary practice among German-language authors that engaged the relationship between narrative, ideology and collective moods in a way that can be spoken of in terms of a mythopoesis. This project builds upon contemporary scholarship that focuses on Stimmung as a way to refigure …

Beyond Authorization: Toward Abolitionist Transliteracies Ecologies And An Anti-Racist Translingual Pedagogy, Lindsey Albracht

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project explores the recent paradigm shift within Writing Studies toward a translingual pedagogical approach, situating many of the critiques of this approach as limitations produced by dominant liberal models of Writing Studies pedagogy.

Taking up Vershawn Ashanti Young and Frankie Condon’s call to move toward a more anti-racist translingual approach, I argue for why dominant anti-racist Writing Studies pedagogies, which commonly revolve around reforming individual behaviors, attitudes, dispositions, or practices, will inadequately address institutionally-produced structures of racialized linguistic marginalization.

Drawing inspiration from a variety of Lefist abolitionist movements—particularly the movement toward Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) abolition, the movement toward …

The One-Armed Viewer: Voyeurism And Masturbation In Nudist Imagery And Film Spectatorship, Benjamin Eleanor Adam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nudist magazines and newsletters were among the first commercial, legal, and widely-available images of nudity which circulated in the late Comstock Era. To evade censorship, producers developed framing strategies that obscured the sexualized nature of these images, even as they also enabled the viewing practices their sales relied upon. This dissertation traces these framing strategies as they evolved through nudist still-imagery, camp films, and nudie cuties, and considers the evolution of spectatorial pleasures associated with Russ Meyer's early nudie cuties.

The Hamite Must Die! The Legacy Of Colonial Ideology In Rwanda, Awa Princess E. Zadi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

April 07, 1994, will forever remain in the history of Rwanda, as it commemorates the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. In 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people, who were overwhelmingly Tutsi, lost their lives at the hand of their neighbors, friends, and families. Although the genocide occurred 26 years ago, there is still much debate surrounding the cause of this tragedy. While some scholars have suggested that the genocide was triggered by contemporary economic and political factors, this thesis is taking a post-colonial approach by bringing into context the colonial history of Rwanda. In the discussion of these colonial roots, …

Mobile Practices And The Production And Curation Of Pottery: A View From The Ancient Southern Russian Steppe Using Portable Methods Of Investigation, Nicole A. Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The southern Russian steppe is located in an intermediary position between the Caucasus, Lower Don and Lower Volga steppe, between which peoples, goods, and technologies often moved throughout prehistory, likely facilitated by small scale seasonal movements and occasional migrations by mobile pastoralists. Conducted in collaboration with the Steppe Archaeological Expedition of the State Historical Museum’s unfolding research on temporary pastoral camps in the Sal-Manych region of the Rostov oblast and Republic of Kalmykia, this dissertation focused on the production and curation of pottery in contexts associated with the emergence and subsequent development of mobile pastoralism from the late fifth millennium …

Is This My Body? A Manual On Navigating Child Masturbation Without Shame, Stephanie M. Amis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children’s natural exploration of their bodies and sexual expression through masturbation is often considered to be taboo by many adults and caregivers. It is important that children are taught that they have the right to explore their own bodies, to express and experience any sexual developments that may be happening. A child can be innocent and still have the freedom to explore the biological processes of their sexuality. In early Christianity, 19th century physicians and some 20th century psychologists greatly influenced the negative attitudes around aspects of child sexuality such as masturbation that still thrive today. As far as child …

Marine Resource Specialization In Viking Age Iceland: Exploitation Of Seabirds And Fish On Hegranes In Skagafjörður, Grace M. Cesario

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the zooarchaeology of four Viking Age sites on Hegranes, located in Skagafjörður, north Iceland, in order to understand the early economy of the region and place it in a broader context with other settlement sites across the island. This research helps to understand the ways the earliest people in Iceland provided for themselves through niche construction activities that included landscape domestication, animal husbandry, bird hunting, and fishing. It also looks at the zooarchaeological indicators of household autonomy to understand the early social and political landscape in Skagafjörður. At these sites, there is evidence for a specialized …

The Material Culture Of Temperature: Measurement, Capital And Semiotics, Scott W. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temperature was invented in the 17th century. While cosmologists affirm that fluctuations in heat are as old as the universe, the intensive quantified scale marking these fluctuations has a relatively short history. This dissertation analyzes why temperature developed when it did and what temperature does for and to its users. I demonstrate that the ubiquitous and quotidian epistemological artifact temperature epitomizes capitalized methods of seeing, measuring, and knowing. At its broadest, the concern of this dissertation is the material culture of knowledge production among capitalizing populations—those that believe in and practice the perpetually accelerating asymmetrical growth of wealth.

In this …

The American Symphony Orchestra Today: Problems In Community, Diversity, And Representation, Hilary Slade Jansen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the symphony orchestra and its socio-political context in the United States. Using three orchestral case studies—the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Venezuela’s El Sistema—I examine the ways in which American symphony orchestras have responded both today and in the past to the public and academic discourse around social inclusion. Interweaving musicology, sociology, urban anthropology, cultural studies, education, economics, ethnomusicology, economics, data from grant-giving institutions, and from symphony orchestras themselves, I seek to situate the wider discourse on social justice in the arts (which has, until recently, lived largely outside of academia) within a musicological …

Framing The Border: Liminality In The Network Narratives Of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Muhammad Muzammal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores liminality conveyed as displacement before death in the network narrative films of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. Due to their depiction of existential crises and possibly fatal scenarios of several characters in different countries and regions, these network narrative films are colloquially referred to as the “Death Trilogy.” Therefore, rearranging the many strands of death-related abstractions and notions in these films around liminality becomes a jumping-off point to explore deeper layers of these works. Through interdisciplinary yet markedly film studies excavations, this thesis projects the liminal spaces of Iñárritu’s films onto border spaces. With borders considered as sites of …

How Psychotherapists Practice In The Digital Era, Josh Weinstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The digital era, marked by digital devices connected via high speed data networks, has altered human experience in profound ways over the past 40 years. The potential for novel forms of human relating and fulfillment of desire has led to myriad changes in behavior, thought and unconscious activity. While many adapt or thrive in expanded reality, for some, the digital can be context, source and/or location for psychological affliction. When those who suffer seek psychological relief, how psychotherapists listen for, conceptualize and work with the effects of the digital matter a great deal. While theoretical and quantitative research literature exists …

Becoming Material: Devotional Encounters Between Humans And Objects In The European Middle Ages, Debra L. Hilborn-Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In our current moment of profound ecological crisis, scholarship across disciplines is calling for a closer look at the objects proliferating around us in order to find new, increasingly reciprocal ways of relating to the material world. In Becoming Material: Devotional Encounters Between Humans and Objects in the European Middle Ages, I answer this call by looking to the past and examining people’s encounters with material objects described in and around three devotional texts: the Holy Week ceremonies proscribed in the tenth-century monastic agreement, the Regularis Concordia; the embodied devotional practices of a thirteenth-century lay woman, Elizabeth of …

The Singing Self: An Exploration Of Vocality And Selfhood In Contemporary Vocal Practice, Emily C. Eagen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Every vocal training technique relies on understandings of how a singer’s “voice,” both literal and metaphorical, participates in the act of interpreting the works of composers. Western classical singing, as codified by the early twentieth century, typically puts the singer in the role of the “medium” or “channel” for the composer. Later twentieth-century reactions promised liberation from the composer’s “voice” with a validation of the singer’s “authentic” or “natural” voice. This dissertation questions both sides of this binary and asks: what alternative models are possible? This work is in three parts. The first section provides an overview of pedagogical constructions …

Educational Investments In Low-Income Households: The Role Of Parental Occupational Identity And Substitutability, Aparna Anand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Poor parents face difficult trade-offs when investing in their children's education. This dissertation studies how low-income urban households in Southern India, where child labor is a concern, make educational investments for their children. First, I build a model that shows how educational investments are shaped by the possibility of children substituting labor for their parents. Second, I collect parent surveys, child surveys, and student-level administrative data from schools and construct a linked dataset. Third, I examine the relationship between educational investments and several pertinent factors, with an emphasis on child labor substitution and the strength of occupational identity. I find …

Handbook For The Deceased: Re-Evaluating Literature And Folklore In Icelandic Archaeology, Brenda Nicole Prehal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The rich medieval Icelandic literary record, comprised of mythology, sagas, poetry, law codes and post-medieval folklore, has provided invaluable source material for previous generations of scholars attempting to reconstruct a pagan Scandinavian Viking Age worldview. In modern Icelandic archaeology, however, the Icelandic literary record, apart from official documents such as censuses, has not been considered a viable source for interpretation since the early 20th century. Although the Icelandic corpus is problematic in several ways, it is a source that should be used in Icelandic archaeological interpretation, if used properly with source criticism.

This dissertation aims to advance Icelandic archaeological theory …

The Surreal Voice In Milan's Itinerant Poetics: Delio Tessa To Franco Loi, Jason Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of Italy’s linguistic history, dialect literature has evolved a s a genre unto itself. The scope of research presented in this study examines the question of dialect literature as a valid genre which bears lines of demarcation that would assign it the distinction of genre. Research reveals that in fact the simple election of a language, or dialect, does not itself constitute a genre; moreover, most dialect literature bears characteristics that would neatly place it in another genre.

To examine this verity, this research compares two dialect poets who employ Milanese as a means of transmission …

Cot In The Act: Ethnicity And Age Affects Phonemic Perception Of The Low-Back Merger In New York City English, Omar Ortiz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

ABSTRACT

This paper is an experimental study on how perceptions about a speaker’s age and ethnicity may influence whether listeners perceive the THOUGHT / LOT distinction. The macro-categories of age and ethnicity have been found to correlate with the lowering of raised THOUGHT (Wong 2012, Becker 2010) and the favoring of the merged vowels in perception (Haddican et al. 2016). This thesis examines whether images of faces associated with different age and ethnicity categories condition perception of auditory stimuli as belonging to either the LOT or THOUGHT class. This thesis builds on previous results suggesting that non-linguistic information influences speech …