Digital Commons Network^™

Corporate Urbanization: Between The Future And Survival In Lebanon, Deen S. Sharp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

If you look today at the skyline of downtowns throughout the Middle East and beyond, the joint-stock corporation has transformed the urban landscape. The corporation makes itself present through the proliferation of its urban mega-projects, including skyscrapers, downtown developments and gated communities; retail malls and artificial islands; airports and ports; and highways. Built into these corporate urban structures are edifices of politics, ideology and certain forms of socio-spatial and temporal organization. The corporation, however, has largely escaped critical scholarly analysis in Geography and/or Urban and Middle East Studies. In this thesis, I argue that the corporation is far more than …

The Threats Of Sea Level Rise: An Eco-Geopolitical Visual Analysis, Jorge L. Nowell-Enriquez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This eco-geopolitical research produces information about the sea level rising, and the analyst explains and projects global effects, and further problems and consequences of the phenomena in a five-minute-long video clip.

The focus is coastlines floods as a consequence of the sea level rising produced by glaciers melting. The floods will affect regions where over a billion persons are living, mainly coastal cities. Therefore, the sea level rising will produce or ease gradual destruction and sudden catastrophes. Moreover, these catastrophes will spur mass migration that might change the lives of a billion persons by 2045.

Three Essays On Capital Structure And Cross-Listing, Saeed Ghasseminejad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation includes three chapters. Chapter one examines the effect of economic sanctions on firms and financial markets. Chapter two studies the effect of culture on cross-listing and CEO turnover. Chapter three looks at how geography influences capital structure.

Chapter 1 This paper is the first comprehensive analysis of economic sanctions and measures the effect of imposing and lifting sanctions on the target country's exchange-listed, publicly traded firms and examines how the impact of sanctions on deep state-owned firms differs from their impact on other firms. The paper uses the case of Iran because of its developed financial markets, the …

The Distant Early Warning Line: Geographies, Infrastructures, And Environments Of Warning, Jordan Steingard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was a Cold War era project aimed at providing advanced warning of incoming Soviet attack via the northern periphery of Canada and the United States. The Line was comprised of radar stations across the 69th parallel, spanning from Western Alaska to Baffin Island, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Academic institutions and research labs, private corporations, and military entities collaborated to develop the DEW Line.

The domes used to shield the radar from the extreme terrain were designed by architectural icon Buckminster Fuller, who was elaborating upon a symbolic language of security …

From Prison To Homeless Shelter: Camp Laguardia And The Political Economy Of An Urban Infrastructure, Christian D. Siener

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At this time of increasing housing insecurity, recent reforms in homeless shelter policy have attracted the attention of scholars and activists. This research sheds light on these changes by placing them in historical and political-geographic perspective, focusing on the role of homeless shelters in stabilizing social displacement by destabilizing solidarity. It demonstrates historical continuity between prisons and homeless shelters in New York City through a case study of conditions surrounding the transition of Camp LaGuardia, a prison that slowly transformed into the city’s largest, and longest lasting, homeless shelter. The case study is an empirical demonstration of some of the …

We Refugees, Again, Aaron Linas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dramatic shifts in climate have generated a new form of global displacement. These ‘climate migrants’ challenge the notion of state sovereignty by introducing a new paradigm for global responsibility. I seek to address this emerging demand of sovereignty by outlining the normative mechanisms of state institutions when encountering displaced persons. The extreme cases of disappearing island nations creates stateless population incompatible with standard liberal values of humanitarianism and border security. My claim is that current normative institutions and principles of assistance to migrating people are insufficient to manage the international crisis of climate change. To be able to aid migrants …

Uneven Policing: Low-Level Arrests During Gentrification, Fiscal Crisis, And Suburbanization, Brenden Beck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I analyze trends in low-level policing between 1990 and 2015. I explore how three contextual changes may have shaped policing during this time: gentrification, fiscal crisis, and the suburbanization of poverty and of people of color. I ask four interrelated research questions: How widely did “broken windows” policing, with its emphasis on misdemeanor arrests, diffuse? Do police make more stops and arrests in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification? Do local governments experiencing revenue shortfalls cut their criminal justice functions to save money, or do they increase them to reassert social order? Did the suburbanization of poverty and of people …

Merchant Seamen, Sailortowns, And The Shaping Of U.S. Citizenship, 1843-1945, Johnathan Thayer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that merchant seamen, because of their inherent transience, diversity, and the unique nature of their work, occupied a marginal position in U.S. society, and that that marginalization produced a series of confrontations with shoreside people, communities, institutions, and the state, most specifically over the nature and definition of citizenship. This argument is developed through examination of a series of encounters and negotiations that merchant seamen provoked from the piers, back alleys, and boardinghouses of the nation’s “sailortowns” from the 1830s through World War II, including: 1) nineteenth century maritime ministry projects in the Port of New York …

Bias-Motivated Homicides: Toward A New Typology, Lindsey Sank Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite significant progress towards equal protection under the law for women, LGBT individuals, and people of color in the United States, hate crime remains a pervasive problem, and rates appear to have increased in recent years. Bias-motivated homicide – arguably the most serious form of hate crime – is statistically rare but may have far-reaching consequences for marginalized communities. Data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the National Crime Victimization Survey have suggested that, on average, fewer than 10 bias-motivated homicides occur in the United States per year; however, data from open sources indicate that the rate of bias-motivated homicide …

The Trajectory From School To Work: A Study Of Life Chances Of School Leavers In The United States, The United Kingdom, Germany, And Sweden, Dirk Witteveen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The school-to-work transition is traditionally perceived as a one-time event; moving from education to one’s first job. In response to the increased complexity within today’s relationship between education and work, the research in this dissertation takes a different approach to the study of inequality and stratification. It considers the life phase between these two institutions as a trajectory – a pathway of several years wherein school careers and work careers overlap and interact.

Given the longitudinal approach, this study starts with a comparison of patterns of school-to-work trajectories in four distinct welfare state regimes: the United States, the United Kingdom, …

Vectorial Realities: Foucault And The Politics Of The Literary Address, Jiyoung Ryu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation articulates the politics of contemporary literature via addressing the theoretical problem at the heart of Foucault studies. The Kantian problem of articulating the “origin” of knowledge was also at the core of Foucault’s oeuvre. The dissertation derives a concept, here-elsewhere, from its analysis of The Order of Things to argue that here-elsewhere addresses the problem at hand via articulating the difference and the sameness that spans the Kantian continuum of I-Other. It denotes the continuum as a relative spatio-temporality with a vector, which reflects Foucault’s interest in the modern physics. As a realist and critical concept, …

"But The Heart Stays Turkish": Identifications Of Immigrants And Boundaries Of Belonging In America, Zeynep Selen Bayhan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the symbolic boundary-making processes of first-generation Turkish immigrants in New York and New Jersey, where Islam has been tainted with negative meanings and symbols. By focusing on the characteristics, salience and endurance of ethno-national, religious and gender boundaries that immigrants perceive and experience in the U.S., it examines the possibilities of social inclusion and assimilation/integration of immigrants into the mainstream society. The dissertation addresses following research questions: What sort of symbols and markers, as well as narratives do immigrants use in order to construct boundaries regarding American society? How do Turkish immigrants, in the aftermath of …

Rumination And Rebound From Failure: Investigating How Trait And State Forms Of Ruminative Thought Influence Attention To Errors And The Ability To Correct Them In A Challenging Academic Environment, Ronald C. Whiteman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rumination is a recurrent and repetitive manner of thinking that can be triggered by blockage of personally-relevant goals, creating a temporary state of abstract and evaluative self-focus that can also become a chronic trait-like style of responding to personal challenges. Despite claims that rumination helps down-regulate unwanted emotion, cope with problems, and lead to goal attainment, it often increases negative affect, interferes with problem solving, and exacerbates goal-state discrepancies, particularly for women. Given the pervasiveness of rumination and its potential impact on cognitive processes and emotional states, one important yet untested question is how it might impact individuals’ ability to …

The Social Life Of Black Thought In The Long Eighteenth Century, Kristina Huang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Social Life of Black Thought in the Long Eighteenth Century moves from the framework of social death to the foundations of social life in the study of early black Anglophone writings. By exploring the diverse textual and visual forms through which black life appeared in the Anglo-Atlantic world of the long eighteenth century, my project argues for situating early black writings within the social spheres of the city, the plantation, slaves’ provision grounds and independent markets, and churches. In this regard, I depart from the popular model of social death in literary criticism as a mode of reading early …

Nomads Of The Body, Exiles Of The Mind: Twentieth Century Transnational African American Mexican Art And Literature, Anahi A. Douglas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the migration of African Americans from the U.S. to Mexico; however, these paths extend well beyond the North American continent and intersect with a much larger migration: the African Diaspora. The journeys of Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Willard Motley, and Elizabeth Catlett to Mexico illustrate an intricate web of rhizomatic connections spanning the Black Atlantic, the Caribbean Ocean, the Mississippi River and the Rio Grande. This dissertation examines the history of African American migration to Mexico during the twentieth century a well-documented, yet understudied area of research. These migrations offer an opportunity to reevaluate canon formation, Border …

The Son Jarocho Revival: Reinvention And Community Building In A Mexican Music Scene In New York City, Emily J. Williamson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the ways son jarocho (the Mexican regional music, dance, and poetic tradition) and the fandango (the son jarocho communitarian musical celebration), have been used as community-building tools among Mexican and non-Mexican musicians in New York City. Since the late 1970s, the participatory elements of son jarocho have been revitalized for not only the preservation of the fandango, but also for the purpose of creating a community-building tool that can be adapted and applied to create musical communities. Across the U.S. and in Mexico, son jarocho communities have formed, using similar methods of musical instruction, communitarian music making, …

The Tuskegee Revolt: Student Activism, Black Power, And The Legacy Of Booker T. Washington, Brian P. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“The Tuskegee Revolt: Student Activism, Black Power, and the Legacy of Booker T. Washington” is a historical study of a student movement that challenged prevailing educational and political ideas in the nation’s most ideologically important historically black university. The late 1960s student movement at Tuskegee Institute played a significant off-campus role in shaping local, regional, and national social movements and politics. In the process, these Tuskegee students turned their attention back on-campus, and attempted to radically revise their school’s educational framework. Founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881, Tuskegee Institute represents the origin of a particular (and recurring) political-educational-paradigm for …

“Yo Soy Su Mama”: Latinx Mothers Raising Emergent Bilinguals Labeled As Dis/Abled, Maria Cioe Peña

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Parental involvement in the United States has been identified in both academic and mainstream literature as a defining marker in academic achievement. Yet most of the literature regarding parents and schools are written about them without including their voice or their stories. Through the use of ethnographic case studies, this dissertation presents the experiences of immigrant, monolingual Spanish-speaking Latinx women raising emergent bilingual children who are labeled as dis/abled. This research is guided by an intersectional framework and the following questions:

1. What are the mothering experiences of Spanish-speaking Latinx mothers of emergent bilingual children labeled dis/abled?

2. What values, …

Niche Shifts, Species Distributions, And Genetic Diversity In Gymnophthalminae Lizards, With A Focus On Microclimates And Thermophysiology, Maria Strangas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The environmental niche is a central organizing concept in the study of ecology and evolution, as the environmental conditions in which species can persist (their fundamental niches) and the conditions in which they occur (their realized niches) can shape spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity at multiple scales. How organisms at different levels of biological organization are affected by environmental heterogeneity has consequences for the distribution of genetic and phenotypic diversity, yet the mechanisms through which this occurs are poorly studied. In this dissertation, I present three research chapters that explore how species’ traits and their microclimatic environments shape biodiversity …

The State And Future Of Autonomous Vehicle Regulation In The United States, Nikolay Nyashin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Autonomous vehicle technology is poised to revolutionize transit around the world. There are currently tens of private companies either testing or building autonomous vehicles, including industry juggernauts like Ford and Google. This new mode of transportation falls into a regulatory grey area. Once cars reach full autonomy, governments will have to decide what entities will regulate them, where they will be allowed to drive, who will be responsible for them and a host of other issues. In some municipalities like San Francisco and Phoenix, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are being tested on public streets in real life conditions. Meanwhile, in 2017, …

Toward A Science Of Morals, Ross Taylor Colebrook

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Morality is not merely a social construction or a convenient fiction. Nor is it supernatural or non- natural. Rather, ethics could eventually be studied as a branch of the social sciences, concerned with empirically discovering the many and diverse best ways of living. There are moral facts (like “murder is wrong”), and these facts are natural, objective, and universal. In other words, moral realism is true.

Philosophers often assume that moral realism matters because it is a commitment of common sense. Drawing on new work in the psychology of metaethics, I argue that ordinary people are not in fact moral …

Pawns Of Policy And Problematized Perception: The Sustainability Of Inequality Through The Space Of African-American Childhood, Jen-I S. Costosa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

African American children are simultaneously entrapped by the construct of race and while excluded from the construct of childhood. Race has bifurcated the timeline(s) and bastion of childhood in which one has clear milestones and expectations and the other is nonlinear, fickle, and subject to a suspicious gaze. Recent research describes this phenomenon as “dehumanization”, “age overestimation”, and “adultification.” However, the aforementioned classifications of African American children’s’ experience presents the assumption in which this particular group would first have to be viewed both as human and also as a child, which is arguable. Policy, both children centric and otherwise, along …

Purepecha Aspirated Consonants And Their Phonetic Variants, Lluvia Camacho Cervantes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study describes phonetic realizations of aspirated phonemes in Purepecha [pua] from Azajo. The distribution of aspiration in Purepecha is limited to roots, a small number of spatial suffixes, one argument structure changing suffix, and clitics. Aspiration is never contrastive for inflexional suffixes, which occur in word final position. There are three basic allophones of aspirated segments: (i) post-aspirated; (ii) unaspirated, (iii) pre-aspirated, with pre-aspiration showing 4 distinct phonetic forms, depending on dialect, and phonetic context. Strengthening of pre-aspiration has been documented in the Lake and Sierra dialects as well as vowel lengthening in the Lake dialect. In Azajo Purepecha …

Brother Outsider: Queered Belonging And Kinships In African American Men’S Literature, 1953-1971, Debarati Biswas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Brother Outsider: Queered Belonging and Kinships in African American Men’s Literature, 1953-1971 builds on the work of women-of-color feminists since the late 1960s and queer-of-color critique in the works of José Esteban Muñoz, Robert Reid-Pharr, Roderic Ferguson, and Nadia Ellis, in order to chronicle the emergence of a queer tradition in mid twentieth century African American men’s literature. Through literary analysis and archival research on marginal figures of African American culture during this period, this dissertation proposes that the black pulp novels of Chester Himes, Robert Deane Pharr, Clarence Cooper Jr., and Iceberg Slim perform a queer critique of and …

Under The Influence: Drinking And Immersion In New York City Theatre And Popular Entertainment, 1850 To Present, Chloë R. Edmonson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation contends that the social practice of drinking alcohol is a significant yet under-analyzed factor in the creation of immersive theatrical spaces that house a variety of historic and contemporary performance practices in New York City. Each chapter thereby analyzes intoxication as a phenomenon functioning both physiologically and ideologically within a variety of spaces in New York: the themed, theatrical spaces of mid-nineteenth century concert saloons of lower-Manhattan, segregated jazz clubs of Prohibition-era Harlem, interactive dinner theatre of the late eighties, and contemporary immersive theatre productions by Punchdrunk and Cynthia von Buhler. The claim that unifies these diverse sites …

Persistence Of Cultural Heritage In A Multicultural Context: Examining Factors That Shaped Voting Preferences In The 2016 Election, Anna M. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The prevailing discourse about the myth of the “melting pot” of American culture implies that heritage cultures are eliminated in favor of a homogenous “American” norm. However, this myth belies the persistence of our cultural heritage in forming our attitudes, morals, and habitual patterns of thought, each of which shape how we participate in our democracy through voting. By contextualizing voting predictors such as authoritarianism, social dominance, and sexism in developmental and ecological theories, this dissertation shows how they are shaped by culture and transmitted through consumption of media and interaction with members of one’s community and family. In an …

Due Process And The Right To Legal Counsel For Unaccompanied Minors, Marielos G. Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unaccompanied minors arriving to the United States fleeing violence and seeking protection are apprehended, detained in facilities, and placed in removal proceedings in accordance with U.S. immigration laws. Like adults, these children have to appear in immigration court to fight deportation and must apply for any form of legal relief for which they may be eligible. However, removal proceedings work as a civil and not a criminal process, and immigration laws have established that while noncitizens have the right to an attorney, they are not entitled to legal counsel at the government’s expense. This thesis examines how the denial of …

The Exceptional Case Of Plancia Magna: (Re)Analyzing The Role Of A Roman Benefactress, Barbara F. Caceres-Cerda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes the extravagant renovation of the Hellenistic gate complex funded by Plancia Magna, an elite woman from Perge, a city in the Roman province of Pamphylia. By using Plancia Magna as a case study, I hope to use her patronage of an outstanding architectural program to examine the dynamic roles elite women held under the Roman Empire in the late 1st century to 2nd century CE. Euergetism played a key role in developing cultural standards and civic obligations. Predominantly a male dominated practice, Plancia Magna stands out as one of its active and independent participants by commissioning the …

Merging Subsistence Perspective And Buen Vivir: An Alternative To Damming The Mekong, Aaron B. Eisenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will examine the planned development on the Mekong by looking at the historical, political, and economic reasons why largescale hydroelectric dams are now being pushed upon the river. It will then critique the international state sovereignty system focusing directly on the Mekong River Commission and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) for their inabilities to mitigate environmental impact while pursuing development. I analyze how the “global city” discourse cannot rationally be applied to Southeast Asia and how the urban-rural divide in Southeast Asia creates only greater problems as dam production on the Mekong accelerates. I propose an alternative …

From Mass Incarceration To Mass Education: Fostering Collaboration Between State Prisons And State Universities, Miriam Edwin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite the demonstrated effectiveness of workforce development programming overall, and college programs in particular, in reducing recidivism and increasing post-release employment, the current landscape of such programming in the New York State prison system is fragmented, disconnected from employment opportunities, and serving too few people.

Given the role of the state in creating and maintaining the structure of mass incarceration, and the history of discrimination and segregation in the country and on college campuses, the public university system has a responsibility to provide educational opportunities to disenfranchised populations. The withholding of education – via the crumbling and deteriorating public school …