Digital Commons Network^™

The French Revolution In Early American Literature, 1789–1815: Translations, Interpretations, Refractions, Courtney Chatellier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The French Revolution in Early American Literature, 1789-1815: Translations, Interpretations, Refractions, examines the meaning of the French and Haitian Revolutions in early U.S. literary culture by analyzing American novels, periodical fiction, and essays that engaged with French revolutionary politics (by writers including Judith Sargent Murray, Martha Meredith Read, Charles Brockden Brown, and Joseph Dennie); as well as translations and reprints of French texts by writers including Stéphanie de Genlis, Sophie Cottin, and Jean-Baptiste Piquenard that circulated among American readers during this period. Drawing on archival research, and the methodology of book history, this study establishes that translations—though often disregarded by …

Adaptation And Augmentation: Towards Better Rescoring Strategies For Automatic Speech Recognition And Spoken Term Detection, Min Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Selecting the best prediction from a set of candidates is an essential problem for many spoken language processing tasks, including automatic speech recognition (ASR) and spoken keyword spotting (KWS). Generally, the selection is determined by a confidence score assigned to each candidate. Calibrating these confidence scores (i.e., rescoring them) could make better selections and improve the system performance. This dissertation focuses on using tailored language models to rescore ASR hypotheses as well as keyword search results for ASR-based KWS.

This dissertation introduces three kinds of rescoring techniques: (1) Freezing most model parameters while fine-tuning the output layer in order to …

The Communal "I": Exclusion And Belonging In American Autobiography, Melissa Coss Aquino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Communal “I” in American autobiography emerges as an aesthetic response to the pressure of using “the master’s tools” to write from a community on the margins to disclose identity in the conflicts of exclusion and belonging. In this case “the master’s tools” to refer to several distinct elements the communal “I” is tasked with navigating: the use of what we have come to identify as standard English, the form and function of European autobiography as a celebration of individual exceptionalism, and the contradictory pressures on these autobiographies to both elevate and protect the communities in question from further marginalization. …

Exacerbating Inequality: Public Schooling In The Era Of Neoliberal Standardization, Johanna Panetti Barnhart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work is inspired by Jean Anyon’s (1981) landmark ethnographic study, “Social Class and School Knowledge” in which she detailed the differential and class-based constructions of knowledge across five elementary schools. While this research study in no way aims to be a revision of Anyon’s work, it uses her findings to set a foundational premise that curriculum and instruction often work to contribute to the reproduction of social class. Further, this research builds on these findings to examine and analyze social class reproduction in the current neoliberal policy context of standards-based reform. A key policy shift since Anyon’s research is …

Symbols Purely Mechanical: Language, Modernity, And The Rise Of The Algorithm, 1605–1862, Jeffrey M. Binder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades, scholars in both Digital Humanities and Critical Media Studies have encountered a disconnect between algorithms and what are typically thought of as “cultural” concerns. In Digital Humanities, researchers employing algorithmic methods in the study of literature have faced what Alan Liu has called a “meaning problem”—a difficulty in reconciling computational results with traditional forms of interpretation. Conversely, in Critical Media Studies, some thinkers have questioned the adequacy of interpretive methods as means of understanding computational systems. This dissertation offers a historical account of how this disconnect came into being by examining the attitudes toward algorithms that existed …

Famed Communities: Trojan Origins, Nationalism, And The Question Of Europe In Early Modern England, Joseph Bowling

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout medieval Europe, royal families traced their genealogies back to the ancient Trojans. Beginning in the Carolingian court, this practice persisted into the early modern period, when narratives of ancient Troy—from accounts of the war to rewritings of Virgil—saturated literary production. Constituting the translatio imperii tradition, in which civilization “translates” from east to west, these legends of Trojan descent allowed European monarchs to legitimize their authority, or imperium, as derived from the Roman Empire, which Virgil famously celebrated as descending from Trojan Aeneas. This tradition formed what I call feudal cosmopolitanism: an affiliation among nobility premised on shared descent …

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 …

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 …

The Juridical Communities Of Apulia: Communal Identity And Municipal Belonging In The Aragonese Kingdom Of Naples, Vincenzo Selleri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study intends to make a contribution to the debate concerning Jewish citizenship in Renaissance Europe by suggesting that de jure status does not provide sufficient information on the municipal belonging of individuals and groups. Citizenship in Renaissance Italy was an equivocal concept. Political rights were usually granted on the basis of wealth and “respectability” (measured in terms of lineage, and education). Jews, women, the poor, and “debased” groups may have not enjoyed such rights; nonetheless they were part of the social, economic, and cultural life of the Renaissance city.

Municipal belonging is better assessed by individuals’ de facto enjoyment …

Affecting Civil War: The Poetics Of Fear In Lucan’S Bellum Civile, Irene R. Morrison-Moncure

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues for the importance of fear in the Bellum Civile, Lucan’s Neronian epic narrating the civil war between Caesar and Pompey (49 – 48 BCE). Previous scholars have acknowledged the centrality of fear in Lucan’s poetic program, having related it to the Aristotelian theory of pity and fear (catharsis) and to the use of affective rhetorical devices in historiographic writing. However, there has been no extended analysis on the programmatic role of fear in Lucan’s historical epic. I examine therefore how Lucan represents fear in its multifaceted forms and analyze how the representation of these forms complicates Lucan’s …

Describing Doggo-Speak: Features Of Doggo Meme Language, Jennifer Bivens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Doggo-speak is a specialized way of writing most commonly associated with captions on Doggo memes, humorous images of dogs shared in online communities. This paper will explore linguistic features of Doggo-speak through analysis of social media posts by Doggo fan pages. It will use the discussed features as inputs to five machine learning classifiers and will show, through this classification task, that the discussed features are sufficient for distinguishing between Doggo-speak and more general English text.

Multimodal Depression Detection: An Investigation Of Features And Fusion Techniques For Automated Systems, Michelle Renee Morales

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Depression is a serious illness that affects a large portion of the world’s population. Given the large effect it has on society, it is evident that depression is a serious health issue. This thesis evaluates, at length, how technology may aid in assessing depression. We present an in-depth investigation of features and fusion techniques for depression detection systems. We also present OpenMM: a novel tool for multimodal feature extraction. Lastly, we present novel techniques for multimodal fusion. The contributions of this work add considerably to our knowledge of depression detection systems and have the potential to improve future systems by …

Perspectives From The Streets And The Classrooms In The Same 'Hood: Linguistic Landscapes Of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Luis Guzman Valerio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the linguistic landscape of the neighborhood of Sunset Park, in Brooklyn, New York by taking into account both a main commercial avenue and a public school with a dual language bilingual program in English and Spanish. Sunset Park is a multi-ethnic and immigrant neighborhood (Hum, 2014). While research has been done into the linguistic landscape of streets, cities, and communities, on the one hand, and about the linguistic landscape in education, on the other, the co-existence of these two in the same context has barely been studied (cf. Maldonado, 2015). This dissertation makes a contribution to the …

Between Settlers And Sovereignty: Literary Solidarity And Anti-Colonial Discourse In Territorial Hawai‘I, 1887–1959, Trevor J. Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project reclaims a history of anti-colonial discourse and collaborations among Asian settlers and Native Hawaiians between 1887-1959 in Territorial Hawai‘i, drawing from archival works, including King David Kalākaua’s poetry, correspondence, and speeches regarding the Hawaiian monarch’s responsibilities toward Asian laborers, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana‘ole’s speeches about Hawaiian land rights and Asian farmers, and texts written by local Asian authors of the early 20th century, including Fred Kinzaburō Makino, Takie Okumura, James T. Hamada, Wai Chee Chun, and Noboru Itamura. Through this recovery of texts, I show how the racialization of Native Hawaiians and Asian immigrants by the U.S. territorial …

Who Is It For? Personal Writing And Antagonistic Readers, Dana Glaser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Feminist accounts of how “the personal” is used in feminist critical nonfiction have theorized that the effect of the personal is to connect the writer with readers who share a sense of her investment in the subject matter. Looking at two recent, prominent works about gender and sexuality, and race, respectively that combine genres of criticism and narrative memoir – Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me – this paper considers how personal writing is shaped not by readers it wants to connect to, but by anxious, even dreadful, anticipation of being read by its …

Lost And Found In Translation: A Study Of The Bilingual Work Of Samuel Beckett, Julien Green, And Nancy Huston, Genevieve Waite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While much has been written and theorized about translation, until recent years, considerably less attention has been paid to the product and process of self-translation, and self-translation studies has only recently emerged as a new and growing field of interest in academia. In my dissertation, I analyze the extent to which literal, linguistic loss in translation leads to figurative gain in the self-translated work and non-authorial translations of three translingual Franco-Anglophone authors: Samuel Beckett, Julien Green, and Nancy Huston. In addition to examining how self-translators and non-authorial translators afford themselves liberties in translation, I investigate the ways in which a …

Statistical Regularities In Melodic Phrases: Effects On Aesthetic Ratings, Daniel Meredith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Universals appear in a number different forms, from naturally occurring mathematical universals like the Fibonacci series, phi, and fractal scaling, to aesthetic universals like the golden ratio in architecture and other facets of human behavior like dance and religious belief. Music is another example of a powerful human universal. Further, within music there are a number of statistical regularities that have been empirically observed nearly universally. One such example would be the division of the octave into 12 equidistant tones. There are also a number of universal regularities that pertain specifically to melodic phrasing. This paper will examine four such …

Relating Justification Logic Modality And Type Theory In Curry–Howard Fashion, Konstantinos Pouliasis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a work in the intersection of Justification Logic and Curry--Howard Isomorphism. Justification logic is an umbrella of modal logics of knowledge with explicit evidence. Justification logics have been used to tackle traditional problems in proof theory (in relation to Godel's provability) and philosophy (Gettier examples, Russel's barn paradox). The Curry--Howard Isomorphism or proofs-as-programs is an understanding of logic that places logical studies in conjunction with type theory and -- in current developments -- category theory. The point being that understanding a system as a logic, a typed calculus and, a language of a class of categories constitutes …

Segunda Parte De La Historia General Llamada Índica (1572) De Pedro Sarmiento De Gamboa. Estudio Y Edición Anotada., Aleksín H. Ortega

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa’s History of the Incas (1572). A Critical Study and Annotated Edition.

by Aleksín H. Ortega

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa wrote his polemic and undoubtedly political History of the Incas at the request of Francisco de Toledo (Viceroy of Peru, 1569-1581). Toledo wanted to deliver to the Spanish King a version of Incan history which could subsequently be used as an ideological tool in the search of legal and moral arguments to defend the Andean colonization by the Spanish monarchy. Since his arrival to the Peruvian territories, Toledo embarked on a long personal visit to …

Pipeline To Failure: Social Inequality And The False Promises Of American Public Schooling, Adia Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My experience as a New York City public school student was absolutely electrifying, though filled with many trials. While my mother would have preferred to put me in private school, having access to some of the world’s greatest institutions and resources offered unique opportunities and exposures. The performing arts provided me with an outlet to express myself and build skills and confidence. In particular, dance education kept me occupied and disciplined in a large city full of danger. Every so often, I witnessed hostile, or even violent exchanges between students, or students and staff. While some of my schoolmates became …

Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a so-called post-racial America, a new gay identity has flourished and come into the limelight. However, in recent years, researchers have concluded that not all men who have sex with other men (MSM) self-identify as gay, most noticeably a large population of Black men. It is possible that a tainted history of Black enslavement in this country that is inextricably linked with ideas of space, surveillance, subversion, and survival inform a Black male’s self-identification as being “on the down low” (DL). This begs the question: What does mainstream society view as gay-ness and how is the DL constructed …

Reasoning With Pseudowords: How Properties Of Novel Verbal Stimuli Influence Item Difficulty And Linguistic-Group Score Differences On Cognitive Ability Assessments, Paul Agnello

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pseudowords (words that are not real but resemble real words in a language) have been used increasingly as a technique to reduce contamination due to construct-irrelevant variance in assessments of verbal fluid reasoning (Gf). However, despite pseudowords being researched heavily in other psychology sub-disciplines, they have received little attention in cognitive ability testing contexts. Thus, there has been an assumption that all pseudowords work equally and work equally well for all test-takers. The current research examined three objectives with the first being whether changes to the pseudoword properties of length and wordlikeness (how much a pseudoword resembles a typical or …

Alternative Futures: The Creative Reconsideration Of Fashion Objects, Kathryn Roberts

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is the beginning of what I intend to be a larger, evolving work that seeks to marry the theoretical with the practical when considering fashion objects that have “served their purpose”. The object at the project’s focal point: a worn out pair of blue jeans. My particular focus on jeans is based on the fact that they, alongside the t-shirt, are one of the most ubiquitous and commonly owned pieces of clothing for people all over the world. This wardrobe staple transcends age, race, and class, as it occupies an iconic status that has made them invulnerable to …

The Production Of Space: Indigenous Resistance Movements In The Peruvian Amazon, Christian Calienes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The resistance movement that resulted in the Baguazo in the northern Peruvian Amazon in 2009 was the culmination of a series of social, economic, political and spatial processes that reflected the Peruvian nation’s engagement with global capitalism and democratic consolidation after decades of crippling instability and chaos. The recently discovered oil and natural gas reserves that occupy the subsoil of much the Peruvian Amazon provide the latest natural resource upon which the national project can continue to be implemented. In a context of neo-imperialism and neo-extractivism where through accumulation by dispossession, new markets are introduced into global capitalist structures after …

Powerhouse Chihuahua: Electricity, Water, And The State In The Long Mexican Revolution, Jonathan Hill Jr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

State formation has for decades been a major analytical focus for historians of Mexico, especially during the armed Mexican Revolution (1910–20) and the “long” political and social revolution which continued for decades thereafter. Since the 1980s, the cultural turn in the humanities has produced groundbreaking works in the field and introduced a model of state formation framed around hegemony, subaltern agency, and the nation. While these reflect prevailing approaches, this dissertation joins more recent interdisciplinary work on Mexico in conversation with a ‘material turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. Focusing on the policy debates and infrastructural networks which attended …

Doing Their Best: How Teachers In Urban Social Studies Classrooms Integrate Culturally Relevant Pedagogy With Historical Literacy Instruction, Maria Akinyele

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What occurs when teachers in urban social studies classrooms want to do their best by incorporating culturally relevant pedagogy into their historical literacy instruction? While culturally relevant pedagogy and historical literacy are complementary in theory and a few scholars have demonstrated how teachers have integrated the two approaches in practice, I questioned the ease or seamlessness of the integration within an urban context. This dissertation examined how three teachers in an urban high school managed the tensions and possibilities of teaching historical literacy and culturally relevant pedagogy in U.S. and global history classes. In this case study, I explored …

Marginalidad Y Subversión En Tres Novelas De Juan Filloy De La Década De 1930, Sonia M. Tejada

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the concepts of marginality and subversion in three novels written by Juan Filloy in the 1930s: ¡Estafen! (1932), Op Oloop (1934) and Caterva (1937). I study these novels in the context of the avant-garde movement of the 1920s and 1930s. I analyze the transformation that the concepts of marginality and subversion undergo when they are explored within the context of the avant-garde aesthetics, instead of that of social realism. I contrast Filloy’s approach to these themes with those of the novelists of the preceding decades. More importantly, I compare and contrast Filloy’s novels to Roberto Arlt’s …

Cynic And Epicurean Parrhesia In Horace's Epodes 5 & 6: Appropriating A Parallel Philosophical Debate For Poetic Purposes, Kent Klymenko

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Within Horace's fifth and sixth Epodes there is a juxtaposition of canine imagery. This imagery parallels two different interpretations of the philosophical concept of parrhesia or frank speech. Horace examines the parrhesia of Cynicism and contrasts it with the parrhesia of Epicureanism. After establishing Horace's philosophical influences, I engage in a close reading of the two poems through the lens of these competing philosophical interpretations of the same concept. I make the argument that Horace is using his knowledge of philosophy to make a larger poetic point. Although Horace's own stance on parrhesia favors Epicureanism, to the extent that one …

The Lines Between The Lines: Stage Directions As Fluid, Affective Collaborations Between Theatre Texts And Theatre Makers, Sarah Bess Rowen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project contends that certain kinds of stage directions can affectively engage the bodies of actors, and the imaginations of directors and designers, resulting in a collaboratively created performance of a given theatre text. As opposed to more literary treatments of stage directions, this project contends that theories of embodiment, especially affect theory, is a useful lens through which to explore the range of potential performances present in various stage directions. By analyzing the ways in which stage directions allow for more agency than has traditionally been considered in theatre scholarship, I seek to encourage theatre makers and scholars alike …

Lexical Access In Individuals With Cerebral Palsy And Severe Speech And Physical Impairment, Iris Fishman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined lexical access in adolescents and adults with cerebral palsy and severe speech and physical impairment (CP/SSPI) who have limited language production due to severe dysarthria or anarthria. To date, the impact of a severe speech production deficit on lexical activation and the organization of the mental lexicon has not been investigated. Such an investigation may support or refute these views of an articulatory basis of speech perception and lexical development and access. The hypothesis of this study is that spoken word recognition will be severely reduced or absent in this population although individual differences may result in …