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Kafka's German-Jewish Reception As Mirror Of Modernity, Abraham Ariel Rubin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores the diverse and contradictory ways German-Jewish intellectuals identify what they commonly refer to as Kafka's "Jewish essence." Focusing on the commentaries of Margarete Susman, Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Gershom Scholem, and Max Brod, I claim that Kafka's German-Jewish reception reflects a broader historical dilemma that grew out of the Jewish encounter with modernity: Are Judaism and Jewishness best defined through religious, cultural, national, or ethnic categories? It is precisely this ambiguity that forms the historical backdrop to Kafka's Jewish interpretations. Situating the early phases of Kafka's posthumous reception within the broader context of interwar German-Jewish culture, my dissertation examines …

The Legal System And Memory For Analogue Traumatic Experiences, Daisy A. Segovia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Trauma and its consequences are ubiquitous in the courtroom. Research on memory for trauma suggests there is reason to suspect that traumatized people may be prone to memory errors. Additionally, jurors' views of witnesses are important as they tend to mistrust evidence given by witnesses they believe to be not credible. If traumatized people are prone to errors, is there a way to safeguard against those errors and make jurors more trusting of their memory reports?

In Part One, I polled participants on their views toward traumatized people and trauma memory (Study 1). Results of this study suggest people have …

Facial Affect Recognition And Social Functioning In Individuals At Risk For Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders, Marta Ewa Statucka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Facial affect recognition (FAR) is impaired in schizophrenia patients and to a lesser extent in individuals at familial/genetic, clinical, and psychometric risk for psychosis. Reduced FAR reaction time and negative bias are present in patients; however, their role is less clear in at-risk samples. Impaired social functioning, a hallmark of schizophrenia, is also impaired in at-risk individuals and is associated with FAR impairment. Given FAR deficits in schizophrenia, the current study aimed to elucidate the nature of FAR and social functioning impairments among individuals at high psychometric risk for psychosis and to examine whether FAR acts as a mediator in …

Dynamics And Divisions At The Salons Of The Rose-Croix: Statistics, Aesthetic Theories, Practices, And Subjects, Mary Slavkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A variety of alternative Salons arose in France following the demise of the official Salon. Within this phrenetic climate for alternative exhibition venue creation, Joséphin Péladan founded the Salons of the Rose + Croix (1892-1897). He framed the Salons as ideologically unified exhibitions at which idealized works focusing on spirituality, tradition, and beauty would engender social reform by encouraging a decadent society to focus on timeless poetic and mystical ideas. Nevertheless, in practice the Rose + Croix functioned mainly as an exhibition venue for artists whose work only loosely responded to the established platform. The exhibited works reveal some overlap …

The Relationship Of Adaptive And Pathological Narcissism To Attachment Style And Reflective Functioning, Petra Vospernik

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined the relationship of adaptive and pathological (grandiose and vulnerable) expressions of narcissism to attachment style and the capacity for reflective functioning (RF). Narcissism serves a relevant personality construct in clinical theory, social psychology and psychiatry but remains inconsistently defined across these disciplines. Theoretical accounts support the notion that attachment difficulties and maladaptive patterns of mentally representing self and others serve as the substrates for narcissistic pathology but are less pronounced in adaptive narcissism. A multiple regression analysis was conducted in a college student sample of 345 participants applying a cross-sectional, survey design. It was hypothesized that pathological …

Expanding Political Space In Contemporary China: A Comparative Study Of The Advocacy Strategies Of Three Grass-Root Women's Groups, Weiting Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The absence of contentious performance has led scholars to question the existence of social movements and to agree with the description of state-social group relations in China as state corporatism. However, defining social movement by confrontational performance is inappropriate to examine social organizing under repression regimes. Most western social movement theories assume that political space for organizing exists before the formation of social movement. My research challenges this assumption by extending the concept of political opportunity structure to conduct process-tracing comparisons of two women's and one lesbian groups' respective strategies when facing interferences from the central authorities. By conducting interviews …

Psychic Collapse And Traumatic Defense: How The Mind Mediates Trauma Living In The Body, Patricia Kim Yoon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this exploratory study was to link psychoanalytic theories of trauma and its impact on the mind with psychobiological research of how trauma lives in the body. The study has expanded on prior research (Cramer, 2003) to evidence that defense mechanisms do in fact moderate the relationship between stress and physiological response, and that there are likely individual differences in physiological response to traumatic stress. This study goes further to identify the psychological concomitants of these individual differences within an adult population exposed to potentially traumatic events (PTEs), and their proclivity for using different defense mechanisms. Defense use …

Marvel Comics And New York Stories: Anti-Heroes And Street Level Vigilantes Daredevil And The Punisher, Jesse Allen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues that the creation of street level, vigilante heroes The Punisher and Daredevil created by Marvel Comics authors and illustrators in the late 1970s and early 1980s reflected the socio-economic environment of New York City at this same moment in history. By examining an era of New York that was fiscally and socially tense along with the development of characters created by the New York based Marvel Comics, I aim to show how their creation was directly related to the environment which they were produced in.

A Behavioral And Biopsychological Investigation Of The Role Of The Illusion Of Control And Perseverative Chasing Between Problem And Non-Problem Gamblers, Brett Evan Bauchner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The illusion of control is associated with problem gambling. The perception that one is in control of a random event, when in reality there is no control, can facilitate problem gambling behaviors. The degree or extent of control may activate physiological mechanism of increased excitation and reward that reinforce gambling. In the studies presented here, performance on simulated gambling tasks that provided varying levels gambling participation were compared to physiological measures of behavioral activation in problem gambler and nongamblers. Participants watched video clips of three horseraces scenarios that permitted different degrees of participation and control over wagering. Concurrently saliva samples …

Essays On Savings Behavior Of Low-Income Households In Colombia, Luz M. Salas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I designed and implemented a Randomized Controlled Trial to study whether relatively simple modifications to how a commitment savings product was framed and labeled could affect savings accumulations and other outcomes of low-income individuals in newly formed Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) in Colombia. Motivated by hypotheses from behavioral economics, the experiment tests hypotheses that behavioral responses should vary depending on whether subjects are led to label and create `mental savings accounts' in private or public ways. Individuals in the private-labeling treatment groups were led to label their savings as earmarked for a particular purpose and to state savings …

The Presentation Of Trans In Everyday Life: An Autoethnographic Exploration Of Gendered Performance, Elijah C. Nealy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The life experiences of transgender men are an understudied area in social work research. Given the negative experiences many transgender men have utilizing the medical and social service systems, greater understanding is needed about how these men negotiate their identities in an array of relational contexts. This dissertation uses autoethnography to explore how one transgender man navigates his identity as a man, father, and social work professional.

Viewed through the theoretical frame of Erving Goffman's work, and in dialogue with masculinities studies and queer theory, this study finds that trans men are continually negotiating their identities in varying relational contexts, …

Bicultural Social Identity: Do Biculturals Assess Workplace Deviance Differently Across Different Ethnicities?, Andy Y. Chiou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research on biculturals has informed us much regarding their cognition and identity integration, however little as to the bicultural perception of in- and out-groups, and whether it can be primed. I examined this question in a workplace setting using the black sheep framework, specifically: Given the activation of one of a bicultural's specific cultural identities, will he or she allocate punishment to deviant employees of different cultural backgrounds differently based on whether he or she views them as an in-group or out-group member? In Study 1, I show that Asian-American biculturals do assess deviant employees of different cultural backgrounds differently …

Planetary Improvement: Discourses And Practices Of Green Capitalism In The Cleantech Space, Jesse Adam Goldstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is money to be made in saving the planet. A whole host of actors, such as investors, entrepreneurs, engineers, and policy makers have mobilized around our ecological problems, seeking to innovate new `green' and `clean' technologies that can serve a rapidly changing environment. The presumption that such technologies are both necessary and necessarily profitable anchors visions of a `green' capitalism that can and must be brought into existence.

However, just as free markets have never been all that free, why should we presume that green capitalism would be all that green? Instead of attempting to arbit whether or not …

Verbal Behavior In Individuals With Generalized Anxiety Disorder And Depressive Disorders, Tzachi Slonim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and clinical depression are both internalizing disorders characterized by sustained negative affect and have mainly been studied utilizing either self-report or physiological measures. Fewer studies have focused on behavioral indices of these disorders, and little is known about their overlapping and distinct linguistic features. The present research examined the above gap in two separate studies. Study 1 synthesized previous efforts made to study the linguistic features of individuals with depression. Previous investigations found that depressed individuals evidence high proportions of I-words, high proportions of negatively-valenced words, low proportions of positively-valenced words, and high proportions of cognitive …

Reconstructing The Nation: African American Political Thought And America's Struggle For Racial Justice, Alex Zamalin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how twentieth-century African American intellectuals engaged American political cultural beliefs central to American identity. A prominent argument of American political thinkers has been that the liberal-democratic ideals of freedom, equality, representative government, the rule of law, tolerance and civic obligation are what make Americans a unique people. From the immediate aftermath of the Second World War to the late twentieth-century such an argument provided American politicians, social movements and intellectuals a strong justification for divergent political claims, from Cold War warriors calling for the containment of Soviet Communism, to Civil Rights activists calling for racial integration to …

Factlessness & Faultlessness: Individual Differences & Dimensions Of Philosophical Dispute, Geoffrey Scott Holtzman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project addresses the question of why philosophical disputes persist, and tackles the problem of how we might better approach them. I demonstrate empirically several ways in which personality, gender, and other factors are associated with specific philosophical beliefs. Typically, one might assume that these individual difference factors are irrelevant to philosophy, and can only serve to bias philosophical disputants. Against this view, I present four case studies, which collectively highlight the different ways in which individual differences in lived experience may be inseparable from philosophical concepts themselves.

A Gift We Can't Keep Giving: An Analysis Of The Prevalence And Consequence Of Educators' Unpaid Labor, Jared Martin Hanneman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unpaid labor by educators is an important topic of social inquiry. With over half of all urban teachers leaving the profession within five years, it is of vital importance to examine the current U.S. educational system and take steps in minimizing the teacher burnout and attrition that is so costly to both students and the educational institutions. Most of the previous literature on unpaid labor focuses on domestic labor in the home rather than work performed by an employee above and beyond their ordinary contractual obligations - either by arriving early, staying late, or bringing work into the home. With …

Biological Motion Processing In Typical Development And In The Autism Spectrum, Aaron Krakowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Biological motion (BM) analysis and interpretation is a fundamental process of human neurocognition that has been only minimally explored neurophysiologically. In addition to its importance in understanding the underlying roots and development of social cognition, BM processing is a prime candidate domain for exploring the underlying etiology of social cognitive disorders such as the autism spectrum.

In an initial experiment, typical adults observed BM point-light displays of a human actor (UM) as well as their spatially scrambled counterparts (SM), in both an unattended distractor task as well as an explicit attention task. Results showed a neurophysiological response manifested as three …

Underprivileged Children In Port-Au-Prince, Haiti: Hearing And Academic Performance Of Children In Public Schools In Port Au Prince, Talia Meisel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hearing loss is estimated to affect more than 360 million people worldwide, 32% of whom are children. Children with hearing loss tend to develop compromised communicative abilities and also have been found to perform more poorly academically than their normal hearing peers. Because of the lack of medical care, children in third world countries are expected to have more difficulty hearing and learning in a classroom setting than children in first world countries due to higher incidences of conductive pathology. The purpose of this study is to assess the hearing ability of underprivileged children in kindergarten and primary schools in …

Formative Assessment Through Written Feedback: Examining Elementary School Teachers' Written Feedback Beliefs And Practices, And The Effect Of Models On Written Feedback, Caterina Almendral

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current study explored three main aspects relating to the use of written feedback as a formative assessment tool: the types (form or content) of written feedback provided by elementary school teachers and the levels (task, process-Self-Regulation) at which those types of feedback are provided; whether elementary school teacher beliefs about written feedback principles and their own written feedback practice correspond to the actual written feedback they provide; and whether exposure to a model of written feedback influences teacher written feedback practice.

Data were collected from 188 elementary school teachers spirally assigned to five groups (four treatment, one control). Treatment …

Latinas Converting To Islam In New York: Habitus’ Influence In Modern Identity Formation, Amalia Alonzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper explores the topic of religious conversion in relation to Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus, with a focus on Catholic Latina converts to Sunni Islam. Bourdieu suggests that these types of religious choices are not choices at all, but predetermined by an individual's history, culture, and setting. That is, an individual already has dispositions that are taken for granted. While this study's participants report that Islam is a new religion for them and not a continuation of their Catholic faith (as habitus would suggest,) this study shows that these converts retain dispositions that are consistent with their previous religious …

Minorities' Perceptions Of Minority-White Biracials: The Role Of Identification For Cognitive, Affective, And Behavioral Responses, Sabrica Barnett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research on intergroup relations has a rich history in social psychology, with scholars devoting a considerable effort investigating factors that influence stereotyping, prejudice and discriminatory behavior. The results of these studies suggest that individuals' cognitions, affect, and behaviors are affected by their own group memberships as well as the groups to which others belong. People generally view the groups that they belong to (their ingroup) positively, and view the groups that others belong to (outgroups) stereotypically (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). However, much of the research on social identification and subsequent perceptions has focused on socially distinct groups rather than groups …

Reclaiming Space: Buildings In Modernist Literature And Film, Sreenjaya Ria Banerjee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that modernists like Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and Alain Resnais construct literary and filmic works that rely on interruptions and elliptical narration to gesture towards an aesthetics of modernity that counters the interest in monoliths concurrently shown by architectural modernism. This is particularly evident in the context of the war memorial, where regimented public memory is countered by the artistic works discussed through their emphasis on private memorials that are changeable, contingent, and mutable. This is a fundamentally altered vision of twentieth century modernity than that embraced by the architectural mode.

Don't Push Me Over The (Knowl)Edge: The Social Correlates Of Latino High School Dropouts, Robert Charles Baskerville

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

According to the forecast of the US Census Bureau, Latinos are the largest, fastest-growing ethnic group within the United States today and will comprise the majority of the US labor force sometime during the mid-21st century. Yet today, the youth of this diverse segment of the population are plagued by alarmingly high high school dropout rates, about double that of African-Americans youth and triple that of white youth. This yawning disparity prompts the examination of the social conditions contributing to this social crisis. How do demographic, aspirational, school-level, and socioeconomic variables affect the decision that so many Latino youth make …

Ecology Of Terrorism: Cross-National Comparison Of Terrorist Attacks, Katharine A. Boyd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The term terrorism is used to describe a large range of behaviors conducted by a wide variety of groups. Terrorist groups differ in ideology, size, financial support, group longevity, and the number of alliances with other terrorist groups. Relatedly, terrorist groups conduct different number of attacks with varying intents to cause fatalities using diverse forms of violence. This study uses ecological theory to contextualize terrorist violence as a product of terrorist group traits in relation to the environmental context. It is hypothesized that terrorist violence is associated with group traits in relation to the varying political, social, and religious contexts …

Between Sites: Critical Convergences At The Personal, Interpersonal, And Institutional Levels In A Service Learning Course, Kendra Rashaun Brewster

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Set within the context of the increasing emphasis on civic engagement and transformative education, this work addresses service learning as a form of civic engagement that holds both the risks of acriticality and critical potential. This study examines the capacity for the critical consciousness and relationality that define the primary commitments of critical service learning (see Kinefuchi, 2010). Thus, this study is grounded in the ways that the circuits of privilege and dispossession were breached in a service learning course where college students travelled to mentor adolescent girls who were in a secure residential facility. The narratives of former service …

Post-Treatment Drug Use, Recidivism, Analogous Behaviors, And Perceptions Of Fairness: Examining Whether Parolees With Low Self-Control Will Benefit From The Collaborative Behavioral Management Intervention, Sriram Chintakrindi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation tested Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) low self-control theory and its relationship with post-treatment outcomes by conducting a secondary-data analysis of a randomized controlled trial on parolees (n=569) called the Step'n Out study (2005). The Step'n Out study (2005) compared the results of a control group (standard parole) with an experimental treatment for parolees called the Collaborative Behavioral Management (CBM) intervention which was designed to improve substance-use treatment outcomes, reduce drug use, and reduce recidivism for parolees participating in the study.

Low self-control theory states that individuals with character traits that are impulsive, risk-seeking, self-centered, and display volatile temper …

The Lived Experiences Of Nurses Caring For Dying Pediatric Patients, Danna Leigh Curcio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this research study was to explore the lived experiences of nurses caring for dying pediatric patients. Nurses and health care professionals may at times have difficulty adjusting and processing when life ends and this may have the potential to interfere with patient care. Reflection on past events and actions enable critical discovery of strategies to benefit both nurses and patients. The method for conducting this research study was from a qualitative phenomenological perspective exploring the lived experiences of nurses caring for dying pediatric patients. The philosophical underpinning of Merleau-Ponty (2008), in combination with the research method of …

Roles Of Dopamine D1 And D2, Opioid And Glutamate Nmda Receptor Signaling In The Acquisition And Expression Of Fat- And Glucose-Conditioned Flavor Preferences In Rats And C-Fos Analysis Of The Dopamine Mesotelencephalic And Nigrostriatal Pathways Following Intake Of Sugars And Fats In Rats, Julie Dela Cruz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Systemic administration of the non-competitive NMDA antagonist, MK-801, demonstrated that acquisition, but not expression, were found to affect the orosensory-mediated (flavor/flavor: f/f) fructose-conditioned flavor preference (CFP). The present studies demonstrated a similar outcome when f/f and f/n processes were combined. Fat-CFP and glucose-CFP studies indicated that systemic injections of the NMDA antagonist, MK-801, were able to significantly reduce acquisition, but not expression, of Corn-Oil (CO)-CFP and glucose-CFP. Both studies appear to have mitigated effects on acquisition as compared to the separate orosensory and postingestive CFP studies.

Previous studies found that systemic administration of dopamine (DA) D1 (SCH23390) and D2 (raclopride) …

Moral Motivation And The Authority Of Morality: A Defense Of Naturalist Moral Realism, Lily Eva Frank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Moral realism has been continuously accused of positing the existence of queer properties, facts, judgments, and beliefs. One of these queer features is supposed to be the normative force of morality-that is the way in which morality guides our actions. Critics of moral realism argue that nothing else in the world has this feature. This is a reason to doubt that moral facts and properties exist at all. This objection can be interpreted in at least two ways. One way to interpret it has to do with moral motivation, this is the internalism objection. The other has to do with …