Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

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 …

Stereotype Engineering, Ian Olasov

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I offer an account of a novel variety of conceptual engineering, which I call stereotype engineering. Someone engineers a stereotype when they work to change the typicality effects associated with a category or expression (performance on goodness-of-example tasks, feature listing tasks, and accuracy rates and response times in recognition and retrieval tasks), without necessarily changing the concept of that category or the semantic value of the expression. I offer a number of examples of stereotype engineering in popular discourse – from rape activism to expansive uses of “white supremacy” and “ethnic cleansing,” to the hashtags #BlackGirlMagic and #MyNYPD, to advocacy …

Excitons And Polaritons In Two-Dimensional Materials Heterostructures - Applications As Qubits, Time Crystals, And Superfluids, Gabriel Pimenta Martins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is concerned with exploring the properties and applications of excitons and polaritons in two-dimensional (2D) materials and heterostructures. It focuses on their potential to form qubits, time crystals, and superfluids. The work is motivated by the unique electronic and optical properties of 2D materials—specifically, their ability to host strongly bound excitons and hybrid light-matter quasiparticles known as polaritons. By exploiting a combination of theoretical modeling and numerical simulations, this work examines the behavior of these quasiparticles under various physical conditions, including strain-induced pseudomagnetic fields, optical microcavities, and periodic external potentials.

The first part of this dissertation is devoted …

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 …

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 …

From Tarmac To Timetable: A Data-Driven Study Of Airline Delay Performance In Nigeria, Kelechi V. Iwuagwu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project investigates the patterns, causes, and impacts of flight delays in the Nigerian aviation sector from January 2024 to January 2025. Utilizing a dataset containing flight details—including scheduled and actual departure/arrival times, routes, and airline information—the study employs advanced data analytics and visualization techniques to uncover critical insights. The research highlights discrepancies between scheduled and actual flight performance, identifies delay patterns across airlines and timeframes, and explores the ripple effects of delays on subsequent flights.

Furthermore, Nigerian passengers frequently express frustrations over flight delays, cancellations, and poor communication from airlines, yet no publicly available data systematically documents these …

Unpacking The Orders, Leonard J. Santos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the end of the first week of his presidency this year in 2025, Donald Trump signed a total of thirty-six executive orders. After only one month, that number had gone up to seventy-six. He is currently on track to sign the highest number of executive orders in his first year in office of any president in the last 50 years, and potentially even the last 100 years if he keeps moving at this rate. In the first 90 days of his term, Donald Trump has signed 159 executive orders, more than any other president in the history of the …

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 …

Structural Studies Towards The Mechanism Of Scanning And Initiator Trna Recruitment During Eukaryotic Translation Initiation, Da Cui

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The central dogma, proposed by Francis Crick in 1958, marks the direction of the flow of genetic information: from DNA to DNA (DNA replication), DNA to RNA (transcription), and RNA to protein (translation). Each of these is tightly regulated and important for cells and organisms to function correctly, grow, and reproduce.

In the eukaryotic system, the initiation stage of translation is the first, the rate-limiting, and the most regulated stage. It involves direct regulation of multiple eukaryotic initiation factors (eIFs), scanning factors such as DHX29, and other factors such as Poly-A binding protein (PABP). It starts with the small subunit …

Transmedial Econarratology: Environment And The Subject Of Science Fiction, Joseph R. Boisvere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that narrators are constructed by their interactions with diegetic space and time in an ecological relationship. This argument draws upon Erin James’s work on econarratology, particularly her book The Storyworld Accord: Econarratology and Postcolonial Narratives, putting her theories of narrating time and place in dialogue with contemporary “unnatural” narratology as theorized by scholars such as Jan Alber and Brian Richardson. Science fiction (SF) offers a rich complement to these theoretical stances. I also focus much of my dissertation on how narratology works across and is influenced by specific media, featuring literary, audiovisual, and digital media, including novels, …

The Origins Of German Industrialization: The Transition To Capitalism In Prussian Agriculture, Daniel C. Colligan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to explain the origins of German industrialization. Historical accounts of German industrialization often chronicle the process of its development but leave reasons for its initiation unexplained. Theories that have attempted to locate the roots of rapid German economic growth have been found to be empirically unsatisfactory, and thus the accepted story has defaulted to a gradualist narrative which conceptualizes economic behavior as fundamentally unchanging throughout German history. This dissertation challenges this reigning view, attempting to provide an explanation for why Germany embarked on a rapid economic growth trajectory in the nineteenth century whereas many other similarly situated …

Global Constructions Of Gender, Sexuality, And Migration: An Analysis Of Five Immigrant Memoirs, Grace Halvorson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone analyzes five memoirs by LGBTQ+ migrants—Jose Antonio Vargas, Edafe Okporo, Staceyann Chin, Danny Ramadan, and Samra Habib—to explore how governments weaponize gender and sexual orientation to construct national identity and exert control over both citizens and migrants. Their diverse migration experiences highlight how “gender border control” operates across families, communities, and national government systems, reinforcing heteronormative structures that regulate queer identities. My analysis of their memoirs reveals how both formal tools, such as immigration policies, and informal tools, such as social exclusion, make individuals outside heteronormative identity categories susceptible to state and societal violence. These personal narratives shed …

Sla Evaluation And Composition In Reconfigurable Cloud-Based Services, Michael Iannelli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Given the business model of offering data and computing services in a cloud setting, a major question arises: How do the services of one cloud provider compare to those of others? With the ubiquitous use of smartphones and tablets, the ability of a cloud provider to support QoS and client mobility becomes paramount. This research proposes a methodology for evaluating service-level agreements (SLAs) between cloud providers and their consumers, with a particular focus on dynamic SLA composition to adapt to changes in the application requirements and the external environment—such as traffic surges, security threats, or evolving business models.

In one …

The Warmth Of Welcome Of Refugees And Migrants In The Western Balkans, Zylfie Demushi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite it getting harder to immigrate to the EU legally, refugees from the global south still try to immigrate to developed countries in the EU through transit states in the Balkan region. In search of refuge from wars, better economic prospects, or family reunions, over the past decade, many migrants have attempted to travel North through transit states like North Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro. A qualitative study was conducted following a theoretical approach by Adamson and Tsourapas (2019), who categorized migration states in the global south into three types, i.e., nationalizing, developmental, or neoliberal. The paper followed this approach to …

Tracing My Roots: An Exploratory Data Visualization And Analysis Of Jewish Immigration And Assimilation To New York City, Jamie E. Gelberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As my Capstone, I explored the complex process of immigrant assimilation to New York City from the late 19th century and beyond through a personal lens, using my Ashkenazi Jewish family as a case study.

I outlined and analyzed relevant demographic data from the US Census Bureau, Berman Jewish DataBank, and other sources to understand New York City during this period and how Jewish immigrants fit into the story. I focused on my family history, immigration and settlement, social assimilation, and economic status. I also incorporated personal narratives from my family history from 3 generations. These narratives help provide context …

Fast Transients From Magnetic Disks Around Non-Spinning Collapsar Black Holes, Justin A. Bopp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Most black holes (BHs) formed in collapsing stars have low spin, though some are expected to acquire a magnetic accretion disk during the collapse. While such BH disks can launch magnetically driven winds, their physics and observational signatures have remained unexplored. We present global 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of collapsing stars that form slowly spinning BHs with accretion disks. As the disk transitions to a magnetically arrested state, it drives mildly relativistic, wobbling, collimated magnetic outflows through two mechanisms: steady outflows along vertical magnetic field lines (“Blandford-Payne jets”) and magnetic flux eruptions. With isotropic-equivalent energy of E_iso ≈10 …

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 …

An Interactive Walkthrough Of Richard Kostelanetz’S Library, Martin Glick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My project utilizes the visual novel game engine Ren’Py to create an embodied virtual walkthrough of Richard Kostelanetz’s personal library. Kostelanetz is a pioneering avante-garde artist, critic, and anthologist whose work spans multiple decades and artistic practices. This interactive experience introduces users to the astounding collection of 25,000 books that Kostelanetz has amassed in Ridgewood, Queens over his decades of publishing avant-garde literature. While scholars might be familiar with his anthologies such as Scenarios: Scripts to Perform (1980) and Texts-Sound Texts (1980), my project allows users to browse through sample pages of his original “Book Art”.

This New Media Object …

Nurturing The Student Voice And Its Creative Power In Mathematics Teaching And Learning: Research With Students On Emotion, Imagination, And Understanding., Luis Adolfo Zambrano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research in mathematics education explores the teaching and learning of mathematics at the high school and community college levels, integrating diverse research methods to examine how educators can cultivate a dynamic, collaborative, and responsive classroom climate. Framed by K. Tobin and K. Alexakos’s authentic inquiry education research framework (2020), the methodology actively engages students as co-researchers, valuing their insights and experiences as integral to the learning process. This approach fosters a meaningful dialogue on managing emotional and cognitive challenges faced by students of mathematics while identifying strategies to support and enhance students’ innate imaginative and creative capacities.

Grounded in …

Self-Reported Audiological And Vestibular Symptoms Associated With Lyme Disease, Daniella A. Bryan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background:

Lyme disease, an infectious vector-borne illness, is carried by the deer tick, Ixodes scapularis, which harbor the spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi, affecting hundreds of thousands of people in the United States annually. Lyme disease has a multitude of clinical presentations and overlaps with other complex illnesses, making diagnosis and treatment a medical challenge. This distinct bacterium can migrate into any organ system through the mediums of soft tissue, the lymphatic system, and the circulatory system. Despite its prevalence and range in symptomatology, minimal research has been conducted to identify distinct audiological and vestibular symptoms associated with a Lyme …

Podcast: One To Grow On – Why Black Studies Matter When Working And Living In Black Communities, Celia E. Ceballos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the transformative potential of Black Studies in enhancing community work within Black and Brown communities in New York City. The research is driven by the author's firsthand experiences and the realization of the importance of Black Studies, which was largely absent from earlier education. Through the interdisciplinary approach of the Graduate Center’s MALS program, the author has gained a deeper understanding of key topics such as the legacy of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movements, and the ongoing struggle for racial justice. This journey inspired the creation of a capstone project, …

American Utopia: The Evolution Of David Byrne’S Viewpoint Of America From 1977 To Present, Morgan A. Prince

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

David Byrne is a multimedia artist known primarily as the lead singer and main songwriter for the new wave band Talking Heads. Throughout Byrne’s career he has continually written about America and Americans. This thesis traces his writings about America from the beginning of Talking Heads to his most recent projects. In doing so, the thesis puts forward that Byrne’s opinion on America has changed from one that is centered on the American people to one that is instead focused on American institutions. Additionally, the thesis traces how Byrne’s work has evolved from idealization to realism, as his early work …

Breaking Out Of Burnout: Leveraging Informal Learning To Encourage Needs Satisfaction To Reduce Employee Burnout, Kaitlin Busse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Given its negative effects on employees and organizations, burnout is seen as a crucial concern in the workplace. To combat burnout, researchers and organizations have explored some individual-level strategies to manage work-related stress effectively. An overlooked employee-driven strategy is informal learning within the workplace. While existing research has focused on learning outside work hours for stress recovery, the current study examined whether informal learning at work is a beneficial proactive behavior for employees to help alleviate stress in real-time, and thus, potentially reducing burnout. Specifically, the current research was interested in whether employees’ psychological needs at work would be satisfied …

Exploring Guyanese Identity In Nyc: A Research Exploration, Shivanie E. Hariram

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores racial and ethnic self-identification among members of the Guyanese diaspora in New York City, with particular emphasis on individuals who select "Other" as their racial or ethnic category. Utilizing an IRB-approved quantitative methodology, data was collected through a structured survey targeting Indo-, Afro-, and mixed-heritage Guyanese populations. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s Cultural Identity Theory and Cultural Hybridization Theory, this research analyzes how participants negotiate potentially fluid identities within social contexts that often favor rigid racial categorizations. My findings indicate that those who identify as "Other Race" frequently resist binary classifications, instead constructing hybrid forms of "Guyanese-ness" that …

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 …

Alle Or Elle: Automatic Speech Recognition On Louisiana French, Emily Chiu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Applications of automatic speech recognition largely serve the most commonly spoken languages, but can cause harm through bias when used for speakers of underrepresented language varieties who are not adequately supported. This experiment’s goal is to reveal how state-of-the-art end-to-end ASR systems perform with Louisiana French, a nonstandard variety of French that has suffered a history of state-sanctioned language oppression in Louisiana.

The Sub-Syllabic Symphonies Of Self-Learning: How Do Zebra Finches Sing Them?, Abiesha Abiola Budiman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Learning is a lifelong journey, where the mind and muscle dance to a tune of memory and motion. It begins at infancy and continues throughout life, encompassing everything from singing to achieving peak performance in sports. Complex motor skills involve multiple components and require coordination of several muscles. Humans and animals are extremely adept at learning complex motor skills on their own. However, we do not completely understand how self-directed learning works. One group of animals used to observe self-directed learning are songbirds. Zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, are one of the most studied songbird species due to their well-defined …

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 …

Comparing Campaigns To End The Subminimum Wage With A Multiple Streams Approach, Chris Peraino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Labor organizations do not significantly represent the interests of restaurant workers in the United States. In the absence of labor representation, nonprofits have become the main advocates for restaurant workers in politics. Among the most active is OneFairWage (OFW), a nonprofit focused on eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped restaurant workers. OFW’s legislative efforts have had mixed outcomes. Two of its campaigns - D.C. and Chicago - were successful. All other campaigns, like those in New York state and Michigan, have struggled to achieve their goal. Why has nearly identical legislation with the same target population of restaurant workers passed …