Digital Commons Network^™

Ethnic Minorities And Family Health History: An Autoethnography Of Guyanese Americans And Kidney Disease, Dhaneesha R. Bahadur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Exploring family health histories (FHHs) has emerged in recent years as an inexpensive genomic tool in public health. Families and clinicians can also use them to uncover family histories and experiences, which could inform better lifestyle choices to prevent or delay the onset of diseases. Exploring family health histories focuses on an individual’s genetic makeup and considers differences in lifestyle and environment. Despite national campaigns, it is an underutilized tool that could lead to engagement in effective strategies and better health outcomes. One important and serious condition that families should be more aware of is chronic kidney disease (CKD). One …

Of Method: A Propaedeutic To Coleridge's Prose Works, Michael A. Granger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coleridge’s prose works, published and unpublished, demonstrate a thorough and critical testing and understanding of British and German philosophical responses to skepticism and the ability of philosophy to progress by maintaining a double-minded and conflicted suture of both the practical or imaginative eclipse of knowledge and theorizing the hypothetical epistemological absolute that explains the relativity of facticity. Any inadequate method of inquiry stagnates within attempting a purely figurative or purely demonstrative solution to skepticism. Thus, the appropriate way to approach Coleridge’s understanding of philosophy is the struggle to make inquiry adequate though progression. Coleridge’s methodological impulse originates explicitly in a …

An Examination Of Factors Associated With Ipv Victimization, Ipv Disclosure, And Help-Seeking Among Partnered Sexual Minority Men: An Integrated Theoretical Approach, Stephen Bosco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The emerging body of research illustrates that sexual minority cis men (SMM) in a relationship experience intimate partner violence (IPV) at rates comparable to those reported by cis women in a heterosexual relationship. Although research on IPV in male relationships has increased, it is a phenomenon that remains considerably understudied compared to research examining IPV in a heterosexual relationship. Despite comparable rates of IPV victimization, SMM are less likely to disclose and use informal and formal support services compared to heterosexual women. To conceptualize and understand challenges to disclosure and help-seeking as well as identify facets to develop relevant and …

The True And Only Technic: Technological Ubiquity And Its Critics, Heretics, And Zealots, Hampton A. Dodd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Against technological ubiquity, the philosopher, the ecologist, the theologian, the psychologist, the radical, the reactionary, and the poet have each responded. This analysis seeks to explicate the nature of such responses, as well as to explore their contemporary form and elucidate what those presently publishing might offer as programs toward the future. In order to do this, what follows is broken up into a series of sections, each focused on what I have perceived to be the foremost themes present throughout technological critique: becoming, freedom, identity, faith, space, time, and progress. Prior to such thematic excavations, this analysis offers a …

Developing Autonomy And Identity On Tiktok Among Recently Arrived Latin American Migrants To The United States, Camille D. May

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Latin American migrants, as content creators and consumers, active on the social media platform, TikTok, weave webs of ‘self’ across borders, employing narrative identity as a framework to challenge depictions, build community, and navigate power along the migrant journey. Amidst a dramatic rise in both US-bound and global migration, my analysis examines the interplay between technology and migrant narratives and identities across online and offline spaces. While deportation regimes, migration policies, mainstream technology, and state control over migrant bodies impose limitations, social media emerges as a crucial tool for navigating journeys and constructing identities in transit. This academic review explores …

Complicating Confidence: A Critical Analysis Of Confidence In A Girls' Empowerment Organization, Kimberly M. Belmonte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the popular imagination, confidence is thought of as a positive or healthy state. Yet there is also a pervasive belief that adolescent girls are at risk of losing their confidence or of not having enough confidence, particularly compared to boys. The larger field of youth development theorists and practitioners see confidence as a positive, normative, and measurable aspect of healthy adolescent development (e.g., Lerner et al., 2015). Conversely, critical feminist scholars assert that confidence has become hegemonic, mandated, and commodified (e.g., Banet-Weiser, 2015; Gill & Orgad, 2016)—taken up by a neoliberal, post-feminist climate as a technology of the self …

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations Of “Peau D’Âne” In Contemporary French And English Texts, Amy M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations of “Peau d’Âne” in Contemporary French and English Texts explores trans-genre and transmedia adaptations of Charles Perrault’s seventeenth-century fairy tale using feminist and narratological theories to examine gendered aspects of storytelling and the treatment of father-daughter incest and blame in the work of selected French, British, and American creators. Texts are read comparatively, with analyses of the adaptations’ plots, motifs, characterizations, and modifications, both in relation to Perrault and to the other adaptations. This dissertation features prose and poetry texts by female authors—including Christine Angot, Catherine Cusset, and Emma Donoghue—in the first two chapters. Reading these …

A Municipal Modernity: Women, Architecture, And Public Health In Working-Class New York, 1913–1950, Jessica Fletcher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Municipal Modernity” is the first study to analyze the architectural history of the district health centers in New York City that women reformers and their allies founded to address poor health in working-class communities. It reveals that women’s philanthropic adaptive re-use was foundational to the architecture of the public health care in New York and led to a program of municipal district health centers. Philanthropic reformers adapted buildings in the 1910s and 1920s to provide affordable health care for low-income women and children in European immigrant and Black neighborhoods. During the New Deal, municipal officials followed the example set …

The Divided Self: Internal Conflict In Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, And Neuroscience, Yulia Greyman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thematic project examines the notion of self-division, particularly in terms of the conflict between cognition and metacognition, across the fields of philosophy, psychology, and, most recently, the cognitive and neurosciences. The project offers a historic overview of models of self-division, as well as analyses of the various problems presented in theoretical models to date. This work explores how self-division has been depicted in the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe, Don DeLillo, and Mary Shelley. It examines the ways in which artistic renderings alternately assimilate, resist, and/or critique dominant philosophical, psychological, and scientific discourses about the self and its …

Interracial Instagram: Depictions Of Interracial Couples On Instagram, Christie Sillo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines depictions of interracial romantic relationships on Instagram, a popular photo- and video-sharing social networking site. Social networking sites like Instagram, whereby users connect with each other by creating, sharing, and consuming content, are prime sites for sociological study because ideas are constantly being (re)made on them. On Instagram, meaning-making is mainly done through the construction of a profile and the posting of images and/or videos. Using a mixed-methods research design of hashtag analysis, digital ethnography, discourse and image analysis, I critically analyze Instagram profiles that depict interracial romantic relationships. In doing so, I develop a contemporary, social …

Values In Evidence-Based Policy: Bridging Socio-Political, Moral, And Epistemic Domains, Karyna Pryiomka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Values constitute an inescapable constant of any policymaking or evidence-production process. In this dissertation I explore ways in which socio-political, moral, and epistemic values inform evidence production and use in public higher education policy. In “Chapter One: Introduction and Literature Review”, I provide a brief overview of evidence-based policy as a practice. I then discuss three major categories of values, focusing on higher education examples whenever possible. Finally, I present the central study of this dissertation. The central question of my dissertation is In what ways do epistemic, socio-political, and moral values frame the production and deployment of evidence in …

Hagia Sophia: Politics Of Space And Hauntology, Hazal Demir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hagia Sophia is one of the most celebrated cultural heritages, considered sacred for thousands of years. However, Hagia Sophia’s political dimension is often overshadowed by its religious-sacred meanings. This thesis aims to analyze Hagia Sophia’s political character through four pivotal historical events: its foundation by Justinian the Great, its conversion into the imperial mosque of the Ottoman Empire, its secularization under the Turkish Republic, and its subsequent reconsecration into a mosque in 2020. Focusing on these four historical milestones, this thesis illuminates a political pattern embedded in Hagia Sophia, emphasizing its role as a space of political legitimacy and ideological …

A Pearl Ravaged: The Paradox Of Haiti And Its Socioeconomic Origins, Isabel Ishibe Exel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Saint-Domingue was once the most profitable colony of the Caribbean, the so-called pearl of the Antilles. Nowadays, Haiti is known for being the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a dramatic shift that raises the question of the factors contributing to Haiti's current state, marked by persistent violence, natural disasters, and political instability. Various discourses have framed Haiti as a country doomed for failure. However, relying on binary concepts such as success and failure is counterproductive to a refined analysis. How, then, should we structure this conversation? My ultimate goal for this work is to provide a nuanced analysis of …

In-Work Recovery Among Hybrid Employees: Examining The Relationships Between Stressors, Recovery Experiences, And Strains, Stefanie Larsen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There has been a drastic increase in the number of hybrid employees (i.e., employees who work remotely for part of a workweek) since the COVID-19 pandemic. While previous research has highlighted some of the benefits and costs of remote work, research on hybrid work is still in its early stages. One area that remains unclear is how hybrid work relates to stressor experiences and in-work recovery from work. The present study examined how levels of specific stressors (i.e., workload, availability pressure) vary depending on whether employees work remotely or in the office, and how the variations of these stressors across …

Migrant Children And Legislation: Integrating Knowledge About Trauma Into Policy, Yolennys E. Albornoz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study seeks to integrate some knowledge about trauma into migration policies in the U.S. regarding children. Migration is not a novel concept; it is a dynamic phenomenon that experiences continuous changes and constantly increases in numbers. Globally, the United States has been the primary destination for foreign migrants for a long time, and most of them are Latinos who cross the U.S. and Mexico border. Here, I explore how children face trauma in their home country, which forces them to migrate. Also, while they migrate and after they have migrated, exposing the three stages of trauma for migrant children. …

Digital Rhetoric Of The Invisible: Bisexual Literacy Practices On Tiktok, 2020–2021, Olivia Wood

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation uses auto- and digital-ethnographic methods to analyze the literacy practices of bisexual TikTok users primarily during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, during which time TikTok exploded in popularity among U.S. social media users, especially among young adults. It is also an exercise in neuroqueer composing, diverging at times from the norms of academic writing and the dissertation genre to perform and intentionally draw attention to neuroqueer styles of thinking and communication. I argue that bisexual invisibility and contemporary bi+ rhetorical activity must be understood within the context of LGBTQ+ political history, particularly …

Investigation Of Algorithmic Nudging On Decision Quality: Evidence From Randomized Experiments In Online Recommendation Settings, Yuxiao Luo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Most recently, academic research has started to address the relationship between nudges and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) and found that personalized targeting algorithms can influence individual and collective behaviors in ways that may lead to undesired consequences for both end-users and firms. This dissertation investigates the effects of digital nudging, particularly algorithmic nudging, on user’s decision quality in online badge recommendations in the e-commerce context. Nudge is a choice architecture that alters individual’s behavior in a predictable way while preserving all available options and keeping the same economic incentives. In this dissertation, I conducted three independent and relevant studies and …

‘The Power Of Three Will Set Us Free': Witchy Womanist Readings Of Toni Morrison’S Sula, Opal Palmer Adisa’S It Begins With Tears, And Migdalia Cruz’S The Have-Little And Miriam’S Flowers, Anamaría Flores

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Witchy womanism is a critical methodology for reading, teaching, and writing about literature in order to generate emancipatory knowledge, activate Queer, Black, and Indigenous consciousnesses, contribute to 21^st century women’s, Black, and Indigenous liberation movements, and foster (re)connections to ancestral rituals and knowledge. Born at the intersections of Black Studies, BIPOC Queer and Gender Studies, Caribbean Studies, English, Hip-Hop Studies and Latinx Studies, “‘The Power of Three Will Set Us Free’: Witchy Womanist Readings of Toni Morrison's Sula, Opal Palmer Adisa's It Begins With Tears, and Migdalia Cruz's The Have-Little and Miriam's Flowers" is a multidisciplinary …

The Effect Of Alpha Binaural Beats On Virtual Reality Experiences, Andronikki C. Gerohristodoulos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Visually induced motion sickness (VIMS), a subset of motion sickness, has been a long-term obstacle preventing comfortable experiences in virtual reality (VR). There is a growing body of research showing that binaural beats (BBs) have been effective to influence aspects of cognition. The goal of this experiment was to investigate the possible effects of attending to BBs and any changes to the severity of VIMS symptoms following immersion in a virtual reality environment (VRE). To validate our hypothesis a repeated-measures, between-subjects experiment was designed (n=16) and an alpha (10Hz) frequency BB and a control audio were created. Participants were split …

Park Use, Urban Environmental Justice, And Place Attachment In Parks In Low-Income Neighborhoods In New York City, Javier Eduardo Otero Peña

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This three-article dissertation brings environmental psychology themes and questions to a large-scale public health research project about a subset of community parks and park renovations in low-income neighborhoods in New York City (NYC). What attributes and perceived aspects of the physical and social environment of parks and their neighborhoods are associated with higher park use? How do residents of gentrifying low-income neighborhoods feel about park renovations that took place in their communities? What can be learned from parks, park renovations and place attachment from exploring user-generated content in the Google Maps platform? Each of the articles presented in this dissertation …

The Role Of Glutamate In The Medial Prefrontal Cortex In The Acquistion And Expression Of Conditioned Approach, Rudolf Nisanov

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A series of experiments were conducted to assess the role of glutamatergic stimulation in the dorsal and ventral regions of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in both the acquisition and expression of reward-related learning using a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, the conditioned-approach paradigm. Rats with surgically implanted cannulas were exposed to Pavlovian conditioning sessions that occurred on three alternative days (acquisition) or seven consecutive days (expression). These 60-min conditioning sessions consisted of 30 pairings of light (CS) and food pellets (US) presented under a random time schedule. After a two-day break, rats underwent a session with no CS or US and …

Breaking Down Bias: A Comparative Analysis Of General Public And Police Officer Attitudes Toward Mental Illness And Officer Decision-Making In Mental Health Crises, Therese L. Todd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Police responses to persons with mental illness (PMIs) compared to those without appear to be more likely to result in negative outcomes, underscoring the importance of understanding these interactions and the factors that may influence them. Relatively little research has examined officer attitudes toward mental illness, and no study has examined implicit bias toward mental illness among police officers or how police culture may impact outcomes in mental health crises. The present study sought to: 1) measure explicit and implicit bias toward PMIs among the general public and police officers to understand how these constructs may vary among these populations; …

Overview Of The Intern Position At Sexgenlab And The Importance Of Public Scholarship, Elizabeth S. Chapin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper represents a culmination of my time interning with SexGenLab and addresses the work I did from September 2022 to July 2023. This paper discusses the work that was completed, and why it is important, indicating how it contributes to the world at large outside of academia. I discuss my motivations and intentions relating to the internship, and how I was able to carry out my goals through the work I completed. In addition, this paper discusses the nature and importance of public scholarship, and how this internship contributed to that mission.

Collect Cosmic Dust, Make It Into Bright Stars: The Use Of Temporal Data In Regeneration Of Life Space And Time Via A Construction Of The Political-Sociological Theory Of Justice, Yi Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues for an argument-counterargument approach to the atypical classics of Franz Kafka and Emily Dickinson. This approach to the literature is useful for a construction of the political-sociological theory of justice, which claims that the state of a just world is each individual’s lifetime moving in a dialectic-of-anti-violence-and-non-violence manner.

Bargaining In The Shadow Of The Truth: How Client Assertion, Perception Of Guilt, And Predictive Inaccuracy Influence Plea Recommendations, Anna D. Vaynman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past few decades, the largely hidden, secretive, and widely used system of plea bargaining has caught the fervent attention of scholars. The Shadow of the Trial model has been central to much of the plea-bargaining literature, despite significant critiques about its oversimplification. The model posits that defendants and their attorneys make plea decisions based largely on the estimated probability of conviction and the severity of the sentence to which the defendant could be exposed at trial.

The model, however, assumes that all actors are rational, equally risk averse, have no competing interests, and possess high predictive accuracy. It …

White Supremacist Print Culture And The Creation Of White Working-Class Ideology In 1860s New York City, Anna Meyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

J. H. Van Evrie believed in the biological basis of white racial supremacy and Black inferiority beliefs which he spread in his publications throughout the 19^th century. He generated support for Copperhead politicians, pro-slavery Northern Democrats, who would enact his racial policies, in his newspaper the Weekly Caucasian, published in New York City during the Civil War. He adapted the presentation of his racial theories to appeal to the economic concerns of among working-class white men and Irish immigrants by using allegories about the Civil War. The newspaper created a sense of white nationalism and racial solidarity with …

Examining Metacognitive Access To Low-Level Ensemble Representations, Vladimir Mudragel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ensemble perception is a process that allows our sensory systems to rapidly extract summary information about the stimuli in the environment. For example, we are able to get a sense of the average number of items in a group of similar items (Burr & Ross, 2008; Halberda, Sires, & Feigenson, 2006) or the average size of a group of similar shapes of different sizes (Ariely, 2001). It is theorized that the qualitative result of ensemble perception is that it provides a gist impression of the current environment, which then enables attentional processes in the brain to determine which parts of …

Applying Structural Equation Modeling To Better Understand The Relationship Between Stressors, Social Support And Wellbeing In The Lives Of Spouse Dementia Caregivers, Craig Holden

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Applying Structural Equation Modeling to Better Understand the Relationship Between Stressors, Social Support and Wellbeing in the Lives of Spouse Dementia Caregivers considers the utility of Pearlin et al.’s (1990) stress process model in understanding the needs of spouse caregivers. Data were drawn from eight biennial waves of the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The final study sample comprised 774 spouses, average age 73, who were categorized based on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia (ADRD) and non-ADRD caregiver status. Results showed that for the study sample as a whole, social support …

Wanting Under Surveillance: A Critical Analysis Of Young Women’S Sexual Desire, Jennifer Chmielewski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The negotiation of sexual desire is argued to be a vital part of the development of women’s sense of agency and well-being. Whereas desire is a concept that is widely used, measured, and diagnosed, women’s experiences of desire are poorly understood. Heeding the calls of feminist psychologists for conceptual analysis, and the need to examine desire within the multiple intimate and sociopolitical contexts in which sexuality develops, my dissertation is a critical feminist analysis of young women’s desire, centered on their subjective and embodied experiences. Moving beyond questions of what women desire or how much desire they have, I explore …

The Confounding Body: Female Corporeality, Androgyny, And Disgust In The Work Of Virginia Woolf And Zinaida Gippius, Yelizaveta Shapiro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Confounding Body: Female Corporeality, Androgyny, and Disgust in the Work of Virginia Woolf and Zinaida Gippius examines how the discourses of degeneration, eugenics, and sexology shaped representations of women’s bodies in British and Russian modernist literature. Focusing on the writing of Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), I challenge the longstanding argument that both authors attempted to escape the material body by resorting to androgynous tropes. I argue that the material female body takes center stage in both Gippius’s and Woolf’s work and functions as a powerfully paradoxical entity: one that generates disgust and enables oppression while housing …