Digital Commons Network^™

Vibe Diggers: The Sampling Of Brazilian Music In Hip-Hop, Romulo De Carvalho Moraes Barbosa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the trend of musical borrowings of 1970s MPB (música popular brasileira) by contemporary American hip-hop producers, especially in terms of what they have called a “Brazilian vibe.” A lot has been said about sampling already from legal, sociological, and historical points of view, but less has been said about its aesthetic procedures, and even less about the wider implications of a tendency for using transnational sources. In the case of MPB, hip-hop artists seem to understand the music they sample through an often vague, intuitive representation, which fuses qualities of those recordings with an intersubjective mood, a …

Dancing In Circles: Bon Dance As Performance Of The Past, Travis Robb Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project traces the contours of the Japanese folk dance tradition of Bon Dance in Hawaiʻi through the nuances of public scholarship, diaspora, and racial capitalism by producing an original play which aims to perform the knowledge and praxis which the performance ritual puts forward. Treating Bon Dance as muse, the original play examines the necessity of turning to the past in order to disrupt a future made inevitable by oppressive systems; a fiction that comments on and critiques the predictive and generative technologies that have embedded themselves into society at large. Through intertwining conversations that explore prophecy and …

Assessing The Influence Of Disability Views On Perceptions Of Hearing Aids Among Older Korean Adults, Stasha Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background

Age-related hearing loss, also known as presbycusis, is highly prevalent among older adults, yet hearing aid adoption remains low, in part due to concerns about stigma and negative social perceptions. This study aimed to examine whether attitudes towards disabilities influence perceptions of individuals wearing hearing aids among older Korean adults. It also explored the potential effects of cultural identity and the age of the individual wearing the hearing aid on these perceptions.

Methods

Ten participants completed the Attitudes and Perspectives on Persons with Disabilities (APPD) questionnaire and rated 8 different images of individuals (one younger male and one older …

Contra La Guerra Contra Las Madres: Una Revisión Feminista De La Figura De La Madre En Las Obras De Gabriela Wiener, Marta Dillon Y Las “Madres De Soacha”, Fatima Velez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation critically examines how the figure of the mother appears across a set of contemporary Latin American cultural productions. Through the analysis of the work of Peruvian writer and performer Gabriela Wiener; the literary, journalistic, and cinematic production of Argentine writer and activist Marta Dillon; and the collective work of the Colombian human rights group known as the Mothers of Soacha—particularly the participation of three of its members in the play Antígonas, tribunal de mujeres—this study proposes the concept of a “war against mothers.” In dialogue with the term coined by Rita Segato (2016), “war against women,” this …

The New Middle Cinema: Aesthetic Restraint, The Urban Middle Class, And The Reconfiguration Of Mainstream Bollywood (2007–2017), Hasnatun Nabi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 2007 and 2017, a distinctive wave of mainstream Hindi films, termed here as the “New Middle Cinema”, employed aesthetic restraint to reconfigure Bollywood’s identity in response to a rapidly changing India. Rejecting the industry’s traditional spectacle, melodrama, and visual opulence, these films embraced naturalistic visuals, grounded performances, character‑driven narratives, and a muted color palette. Drawing on industrial analysis, close textual reading, and audience reception data, this thesis examines seven representative films (Chak De India, Wake Up Sid, My Name is Khan, The Lunchbox, Piku, Kapoor & Sons, and Lipstick Under My Burkha …

Implicit Attitudes Toward Hearing Aid Visibility: Conspicuous Versus Inconspicuous Hearing Aid Colors, Orly R. Ames

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hearing aid stigma remains a significant barrier to treatment uptake, with device visibility frequently identified as a contributing factor. Although prior research has examined visibility in relation to hearing aid size and style, the role of color as a distinct aesthetic dimension has not been systematically investigated. The present study assessed whether hearing aid color affects implicit and explicit attitudes toward hearing aids and whether such evaluations differ across contexts. Twenty-six adults who were not current hearing aid users participated in an online quantitative multi-method study consisting of an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report questionnaires. The IAT measured implicit …

The Maghrebi Silk Road: A Medieval Exploration, Malak Ouammou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Maghrebi Silk Road: A Medieval Exploration is an interdisciplinary historical examination of a variety of intellectual and material cross-cultural interactions and connections between Asia and the Maghreb from 900 to 1492. It primarily revolves around agriculture, sericulture, and immaterial and material culture, with an emphasis on knowledge production and dissemination. In it, I focus on the Mediterranean endpoint of the Silk Road network, illustrating the Maghrebi Silk Road through an exploration of various case studies such as rice, silk, and storytelling that demonstrate the role of and the extent to which these “secondary” Silk Road routes existed and were …

Culture And Its Discontents: Versions Of Matthew Arnold From The 1860s To The 1980s, Jarrett Moran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between the 1860s and the 1980s, the concept of culture articulated by Matthew Arnold provided a widespread and persistent language for making claims about who was ready for inclusion in British politics and identity and who was not yet ready or even incapable of being included. Scholarship on Arnoldian culture has often focused on presenting just one version of Arnold, whether as a cultural elitist, a progenitor of literary studies, or proponent of “doing away with classes.” This dissertation instead shows that Arnold’s concept of culture was so pervasive and persistent because he could be appropriated and redefined by people …

Finding Luis: A Creative Nonfiction Account Of Law & Society, Jason M. Leggett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay explores the contradictions in legal theory and human experience through creative nonfiction. Its main purpose is to argue that a truly just society requires acknowledging the profound influence of individual narratives on the law. This is supported by blending personal narratives, critical analysis, and philosophical inquiry to reveal the gap between codified law and lived realities for marginalized individuals. This unique Legal Poetics methodology employs a series of six vignettes, such as the author's and Luis's shared experiences with traumatic brain injury and the denial of justice, as data. By integrating autoethnography, law as narrative, and performativity theories, …

Foreign Songs, Occitan Voices, And The Guitar In Early Modern France (C. 1570-1650), Ana Beatriz Mujica Lafuente

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The cultural traditions of European nations are too often treated as independent and essential entities, obscuring the transnational and interregional exchanges that have shaped modern cultures. In musicology, recent studies have emphasized the plurality and mobility of people, cultures, and music in Europe. Yet, French songs are still largely explained within the framework of the national, generally privileging written over oral traditions, printed over manuscript music, national over regional languages, and monolingual over plurilingual practices. Through the study of songs in Italian, Spanish, Occitan, and Turkish, this dissertation challenges such preconceptions.

This study shows that secular songs in foreign and …

At The Margins Of History, The Body Moves And Knows: Carmen As Myth, Flamenco As A Fugitive Form Of Knowledge Transmission, Inmaculada Zanoguera Garcias

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My research, grounded in decolonial historiography and performance studies, examines how Spain has historically relied on the exoticized Other for the construction of its national identity. At the center of my analyses is Carmen, the eponymous protagonist of French writer Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella Carmen. Through this dissertation, I attend to the process through which this fictional character turned into the enduring myth of Carmen—the Orientalized, quintessential Spanish woman—and the consequences that upholding this myth has on the real lives of women, historically and contemporarily. I depart from the assumption that this myth-making process emerged in response to Spain’s inability …

Sometimes I Picture You Dreaming: How American Female Directors Use Women-In-Prison Films As A Pathway For Public Education And Activism In The Era Of Mass Incarceration, Nicolette Natale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the role of female directors in creating media that showcases how prisons perpetuate sexism or gender-based violence. As mass incarceration began to take off in the 1970s, this paper begins with an analysis of Jack Hill’s The Big Doll House (1971), which often served as the model for women-in-prison (WIP) exploitation films. While Hill perpetuated the white and male gaze in The Big Doll House, Stephanie Rothman subverts oppressive gazes in her WIP film, Terminal Island (1973), and demonstrates a concern with the historical gendered realities of prison – moving beyond representations of prison on the …

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

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

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

Interspecies Responsivity In Early Modern Drama And Animal Performances, Taylor C. Culbert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes an expansive, interspecies definition of performance that uses behavior rather than cognition as the decisive feature and illustrates how such a definition can reshape our approach to theatre and performance history. Using the concept of responsivity, which refers to the embodied and affective ways that humans and non-human animals acknowledge and react to one another, I trace human–animal interactions across a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century performance genres, from the aristocratic stag hunt and entertainments involving trained animals to the plays of Molière and Shakespeare. Drawing on my experience training animals, I offer a new perspective on …

Disability Theatre Communities: Engaging Artists And Audiences In Contemporary International Performance, Joseph Paul Hill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Disability Theatre Communities” examines how communities are constructed in, through, and around contemporary international disability theatre performances. It explores ideas of community formation and intersection across three case studies to elucidate the various ways in which disability theatre artists, productions, companies, and organizations attract, engage, and educate variable artist and audience communities. The project analyzes Rome, Italy’s Teatro Patologico and its Integrated Theatre of Emotion, a theatrical training program for neurodivergent performers; Wales-based writer, theatre-maker, and dramaturg Kaite O’Reilly, whose international collaborations center d/Deaf and disabled performers and foreground audience accessibility; and the biennial BIT (Blind in Theatre) International Festival …

Giving Voice To The Frames Of War: A Digital Humanities Framework For Evaluating War Crimes Databases, Leila Markosian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Developments in digital technologies have complicated existing debates around the ethics of cataloging war crimes and human rights violations. Digital humanities methods of evaluating digital scholarship can help to construct a framework for evaluating war crimes databases, a process which requires a fine-tuned critical analysis aimed towards understanding the purpose of compiling the database, the platform or media template through which the database is presented, and the communicative potentials of the database. The following paper presents a survey of the existing literature on war crime databases and the politics of memory; a model of how war crimes database analyses may …

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 …

The Reimagined Past: Investigating Generational Trauma Through Visual Semiotics And Visual Autoethnography Of Recreated Family Photographs, Josephine A. Barnett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Family photographs, and particularly the curation of family photo albums, serve as a source of data, providing researchers with the opportunity to illustrate the role of the visual in reproducing certain social norms and ideals by dictating the depiction or representation of specific types of families and experiences. Arguably, what is left outside the frame of a photograph is more revealing about familial norms, memory, and narrative than what is deliberately captured within it (Hirsch, 1997a; Kuhn, 2002a). In other words, the hegemony and standardization of family photos shed light on the need for an alternative visual narrative that depicts …

Not Meant To Be Read: The Stories They Silence, The Resistance That Speaks, Cristina Onea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I trace the evolution of surveillance from overt state violence to the more insidious forms of ideological policing embedded in everyday life. Through lived experience, oral history, and critical autoethnography, I explore how surveillance moves through bodies, families, institutions, and memory—not simply as external control, but as internalized rhythms of fear, vigilance, and self-surveillance. I move between my father's life under Romanian dictatorship, my own embodied inheritance, and the contemporary struggles of librarians facing ideological suppression to reveal surveillance as a structure that persists through generations, mutates across contexts, and demands new forms of resistance.

I argue …

The Mystic Chords Of Memory: The Civil War Musical As Historiography, Christine Snyder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The U.S. American Civil War is arguably the defining event in the nation’s history; it was the bloodiest war in that history, but also the means by which the United States ended slavery within its borders. Musical theatre, the major U.S. American contribution to popular and commercial theater, might seem a natural partner for chronicling these vital and epic events, but unlike the founding of the nation, which spawned two popular musicals, 1776 (1968) and Hamilton (2015), Civil War musicals have struggled to find audiences or become a part of the musical theatre canon. In this dissertation, I examine how …

Performing Ero Guro: Erotic-Grotesque Bodies And Normativity In Post-Wwii Japanese And Korean Theatre, Dohyun Shin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates how portrayals of erotic and grotesque bodies in post-WWII Japanese and Korean theatre responded to each nation’s image of the ideal body. Those ideal bodily images were the product of haunting modernity as well as of the following historical circumstances after Japan’s loss in WWII—the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the U.S. and Japan and the attendant protests (Japan) as well as the aftermath of Japanese colonial rule, the Korean war, and Korea’s military dictatorships. Instead of uncovering the historical legacy of the early 20^th-century cultural trend Ero Guro Nansensu (Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense) …

Recognizing Elder Abuse In Mongolia: Experiences Of Family Physicians, Ariunsanaa Bagaajav

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Elder abuse is a globally recognized social problem with serious consequences. The most recent meta-analysis estimates the prevalence of elder abuse at 17%. Studies conducted in Asian countries suggest prevalence rates higher than the global average. Social stressors including alcoholism, unemployment, and poverty related to economic transitions, many of which apply in Mongolia, are associated with elder abuse. International studies have found that health care providers play critical roles in detecting cases of elder abuse. Due to universal access to primary care in Mongolia, family physicians are uniquely positioned to interact with potential victims of elder abuse. However, the extent …

The Cultural Complexity Of Immigrants And The Implications For Personality Assessment: Exploring The Role Of Frame Switching, Patrick Jay Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A significant body of personality research has focused on cross-national comparison, but less attention has been devoted to within-country subcultural complexity – especially with regards to the growing population of bicultural immigrants who subscribe to multiple cultural-value systems. Bicultural individuals have been found to view situations under distinct frames of reference corresponding to their heritage and host cultures, and their attitudes and behavior can vary depending on which frame is activated at a given moment. This dissertation investigates whether such frame switching effects can be caused by elements within a formal personality assessment setting, and in turn affect bicultural respondents’ …

Choreographing A Journey Of Self-Discovery: An Exploration Of Dance, Embodied Knowledge, And Identity, Francie Johnson-Sealey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constitutes a voyage of self-discovery and reconciliation with my identity as an African American female dance educator. Struggling with self-acceptance and confidence, my life seemed to be in a perpetual state of crisis. Behind a façade of happiness lay buried pain stemming from internalized racism and misplaced resentment that I still carry. Unable to persist in a state of confusion, I embark on a journey of mindful introspection to uncover the origins of my emotional turmoil and to heal. Movement becomes a crucial channel for unearthing sources of anxiety and learning to navigate these emotions. Running, jumping, twisting …

Turning Movements Into Markets: How Corporations Co-Opt Cultural Values For Profit, Anthony J. Capote

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I explore how corporations engage in values-based marketing in the 21^st Century. It is hardly a new phenomenon for corporate advertising to co-opt popular cultural values and trends. With the rise of platform capitalism — under which digital platforms generate wealth by cultivating our online data and resell it to advertisers — as well as the political and social context of the Trump Administration, however, major corporations have entered a new phase in the marketing framework that aims to attract consumers based specifically on their cultural and political values. Using a mixed methods approach I explore …

Racial-Sexual Normativity In/As Narratives Of “The Human”, Jeri Brand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis synthesizes Sylvia Wynter’s and Judith Butler’s models of identity-formation to analyze discourses of racialization and sex/gender difference in normative scientific theories of “the human.” I argue that eugenicist white supremacism and sex/gender normativity form a single conceptual framework – what I call “the racial-sexual matrix” – throughout these scientific narratives. I then trace an epistemological consistency across 18^th- through 21^st-century scientific literature as evidence for the ongoing legacies of coloniality, white supremacy, and eugenics in current hegemonic sex/gender ontologies. Finally, I contend that the racial-sexual matrix functions as an index of proper humanness not …

No Ela Without Ella: Understanding The Naming And Crafting Of Gendered Subjectivities In Puerto Rico, Carmín Quijano Seda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the beginning of the 20th century, the official metadiscourses about gendered job titles sedimented the idea that names or indexes pointing to women should be interpreted as unskilled, cheap, or even free labor in Puerto Rico (Azize, 1985; Muñiz Mas, 1998; Baerga-Santini, 1999). For this reason, Puerto Rican women organized and fought for equality in work settings. Furthermore, they became more active in politics and the government. Nevertheless, the Estado Libre Asociado (ELA) and local media discourses and interpretations about women’s labor discouraged them from participating in more senior positions (Acevedo Gaud, 2012).

However, this interpretation seemed to have …

Algorithmic Love: Twenty-First Century Organizations Of The Romantic, Sandra Moyano Ariza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the highly computed and accelerated experiences of digital love as well as their cultural and artistic representations in order to shed light on the human and more-than-human entanglements producing the algorithmic love experience. The recent turn to love in critical theory and cultural studies examines how love circulates in neoliberal societies and in the subjective processes of the users, foregrounding the control of populations and the very much lamented “end of love” (Illouz 2019). My study of love supplements the neoliberalist critique of algorithmic love with a posthuman and media theory approach that attends to the material …

Más Allá De La Crisis Y La Emergencia: Aproximaciones A Los Movimientos Migratorios Contemporáneos A Través De La Traducción Y La Comedia, Fabiola Fernandez Peer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Esta investigación propone una reflexión original sobre la migración más allá de los marcos de la crisis y de la emergencia en referencia a acontecimientos concretos de estos últimos diez años de “crisis/emergencias migratorias” en y entre las regiones sur y norte del continente. El análisis del ensayo visual de la escritora/artista visual Verónica Gerber; el ensayo y la escritura ficcional de la escritora Valeria Luiselli y los performances de comedia de los comediantes/influencers George Harris y Jóse Rafael Guzmán revela que estos materiales pugnan con el discurso oficial, mediático, artístico, humanitario referido a la migración. Señala el impacto …

Without Us There Is No Britain: Black British Photography And Film Networks, 1950-1989, Maria T. Quinata

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation tracks three moments from 1950 to 1989, when images were put to work by Black photographers and filmmakers to stake individual and communal claims to Britain and Britishness: first, through the emergence of photographic portraiture taken in domestic living spaces during the 1950s to 1970s; second, through the Black Panther Movement and their use of photography in the late 1960s to mid 1970s, and last, with the efflorescence of Black film and video collectives in the 1980s. At each of these moments, I attend to the simultaneous production, negotiation, and co-mingling of new social identities that were diasporic, …