Digital Commons Network^™

The Voting Rights Act Under Siege: The Development Of The Influence Of Colorblind Conservatism On The Federal Government And The Voting Rights Act, Melanie Adrienne Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent activity by state governments to change voting rights law to limit access to the polls by minority voters, and directly challenge the legislation that protects voters from discrimination based on race, reveals an unsettling trend: states are increasingly comfortable challenging the federal mandate promulgated by the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. The Voting Rights Act was once hailed as a crown jewel in the constellation of legislation born of the Civil Rights movement. Its implementation had a significant positive impact, expanding the integration of polls and elected offices. Reauthorized four times since 1965, the VRA appeared to have …

The Odyssey Of North Korean Defectors: Issues And Problems In The Migration Process, You Gene Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the Great Famine in the 1990s, many North Koreans have emigrated in search of better lives in South Korea or other countries. However, they face hardship and peril in every phase of this odyssey. In China, North Korean defectors suffer from the constant threat of being arrested and deported by the Chinese authorities. Furthermore, the Chinese government has refused to grant refugee status to North Korean defectors because of its desire to maintain positive diplomatic relations with North Korea. Consequently, most of the defectors aim to go to South Korea, though some young and educated North Koreans prefer the …

Psychosocial Sequelae Of Homicide Among Murder Victims' Family Members: An Appraisal Of Depression, Grief, And Posttraumatic Stress, Sarah Kopelovich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current investigation explored what is known regarding the psychological sequelae of the post-homicide experience for murder victims' family members and friends (MVFM). Participants were also asked about whether they felt they had attained closure, a term which populates anecdotal and theoretical accounts of MVFM's experience. Previous literature guided a theoretical definition of closure as a dimensional construct that represents adaptive functioning following a murder, and includes (1) absence of disabling symptomatology, (2) absence of ruminations about the event or murder victim, and (3) subjective return to baseline functioning. This quasi-experiment consisted of a between-subjects cross-sectional design. The dependent variable …

"Young Men Of The Stones": Gendering The First Palestinian Intifada, Karen Lauria

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The First Palestinian Intifada (1987 - 1993) began on December 9, 1987 with riots protesting the killing of a young Palestinian man by the Israeli Defense Forces. The riots quickly grew into a much larger grassroots uprising -- Intifada -- against Israeli occupation. In the following weeks and months, the Occupied Territories were engulfed in waves of protests, demonstrations, boycotts, and other acts of civil disobedience, which continued until 1993. Although Intifada protestors represented a cross-section of Palestinian society, encompassing both old and young, male and female, a single, particular masculine trope soon came to dominate-that of young male activists …

No Shortcuts: The Case For Organizing, Jane Frances Mcalevey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation will explore how ordinary workers in the new economy create and sustain power from below.

In workplace and community movements, individuals acting collectively have been shown to win victories using a variety of different approaches. In this dissertation, I will argue that different approaches lead to different outcomes, often very different outcomes. I will use a framework throughout of three broad types of change processes; advocacy, mobilizing, and organizing, though my emphasis is on the latter two. And I will argue that each is productive of a different kind of victory.

In arguing my case, that advocacy, mobilizing, …

Middle School Girls In Postfeminist Times, Susan Mccullough

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation, based on an ethnographic case study conducted in the 2013-14 school year, examines early adolescent girls and their teachers and the way in which they experience gender and gender relations in the public middle school context in New York City. Current research into schools in the United States tends to focus on the experience of those students who are in crisis. For the most part, girls are not considered to be a demographic in crisis in public schools in the United States today. Because research on gender and schooling that highlights the success of girls is based on …

Apple Picking: The Rise Of Electronic Device Thefts In Boston Subways, Kendra Gentry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As mobile technology advances and the demand for WiFi and phone coverage increases, electronic device theft is becoming an international problem in metropolitan public transportation systems. Using transit police reports, this dissertation applies crime opportunity theories to understand which factors increased electronic device theft in Boston subway stations from 2003-2011.

This approach addresses previous studies regarding crime on public transportation, robbery and larceny on subways and electronic device theft - as none have focused on this problem as the theft of a "hot product" within a "hot environment." Negative binomial regression, crime script analysis, sign tests and temporal pattern identification …

Archiving The City: A Guide To The Art Of Urban Interventions, Olatokunbo Adeola Enigbokan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The topic of this dissertation is the development and exploration of alternative methodologies for understanding and relating to everyday urban experience. The project is a psychogeographical exploration of methodologies used in contemporary art and architectural practice to create street-level "urban interventions." For the purposes of this study, urban interventions are defined as actions, performances, installations and objects created by artists, and or activists and sometimes architects, and inserted into, or responsive to, everyday urban environments, usually taking place outside of official art spaces, such as museums and galleries. In most cases these interventions are unexpected, express a "do-it-yourself" aesthetic and …

Narratives Of Interiority: Black Lives In The U.S. Capital, 1919 - 1942, Paula C. Austin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constructs an urban, social and intellectual history of poor and working class African Americans in the interwar period in Washington, D.C. Although the advent of social history shifted scholarly emphasis onto the "ninety-nine percent," many scholars have framed black history as the story of either the educated, uplifted and accomplished elite, or of a culturally depressed monolithic urban mass in need of the alleviation of structural obstacles to advancement. A history of the poor and working class as individuals with both ideas and subjectivity has often been difficult simply because there are limited archival sources.

"Narratives of Interiority" …

Por Uma Vida Sem Catracas: The 'June Uprising' And Recent Movements In Brazil, Matthew Binetti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The protests in Brazil in June 2013 which gained attention after a proposal to raise bus fares or what have come to be referred to as the `June Uprising' and those that have since continued, far exceed the issue of bus fare in their significance. These events are only part of a series of movements and trends that are united by a common desire to create alternatives based on ideas of autonomy, solidarity, and horizontalism. This paper focuses on groups who are at the center of this struggle such as The Free Fare Movement, The Popular Committees for the World …

Luti Masculinity In Iranian Modernity, 1785-1941: Marginalization And The Anxieties Of Proper Masculine Comportment, Robert Joseph Bell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper offers a genealogy of changing conceptualizations and performances of masculinity in 19^th and early to mid-20^th century Iran, and examines in particular a unique group of masculine subjects known as the lutis. The first component of the analysis traces the historical lineage of these lutis, situating their emergence out of Persian Sufi brotherhoods, bandit clans ('ayyar), and guild-like organizations (futuwwa) from the period of the 15th to the 19th century CE. This section provides an account of the most pertinent and distinguishing rites, attitudes, and practices of the …

Blessed Disruption: Culture And Urban Space In A European Church Planting Network, John D. Boy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New Protestant churches are being founded in cities around the world. They are the product of a conscious effort on the part of evangelicals to found, or ``plant,'' new churches in urban areas. Behind this effort are a whole host of actors, including denominations, churches, seminaries, and parachurch organizations, who come together in church planting networks to establish theologically conservative churches that will speak to young urban professional audiences. The hope is that these efforts will scale up and turn into a movement bringing about religious revival among culturally influential groups. Among the focal areas for these efforts are European …

Leveraging Capacity: Technical Solutions To Hunger In The Era Of Neoliberalism, Elizabeth Perry Bullock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Leveraging Capacity: Technical Solutions to Hunger in the Era of Neoliberalism takes the Global Seed Vault and the value of "global crop diversity" as a point of departure for raising questions about the influence of digital technology on the seed and about the solution to hunger known as "global food security." Discussions about food security among food studies scholars highlight either the failures of global public health advocates to regulate the food and beverage industry or they view food security, like earlier campaigns against global hunger, as an instrument for U.S. foreign policy. On either side of this debate, the …

All Consuming Self-Destructiveness: Images Of Female Attractiveness In Fashion Advertising And The Impact On Women's Body Satisfaction, Self-Presentations On Social Networks, And Beauty-Related Consumption Behavior, Maria Christoforou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sociocultural stereotypes of feminine beauty are widespread in almost every form of popular media, but most pervasively in fashion advertising. The fashion advertising industry overwhelms women with images that represent what is considered to be the "ideal beauty." In reality, for most women such stereotypes of beauty are almost totally unachievable, as the ideal beauty portrayed in advertisements is based on absolute perfection. Advertisers' use of such extreme and unrealistic role models implies that in order for a woman to be considered beautiful she must be perfect, which makes it difficult for her to achieve any level of contentment with …

Growing Up Online: Identity, Development And Agency In Networked Girlhoods, Claire M. Fontaine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Young women's digital media practices unfold within a postfeminist media landscape dominated by rapidly circulating visual representations that often promote superficial readings of human value. Meanwhile the dominant framing within educational policy and practice of digital media literacy insufficiently captures young people's motivations for engaging in multimedia production, online gaming and blogging. In addition to using digital media for social purposes, and to navigate dimensions of social difference like race, class and gender, working class young women of color also use digital media to develop internal awareness of their selves. The processes of documenting the self, reflecting on the documented …

Performing (Non)Profit, Race, And American Identity In The Nation's Capital: Arena Stage, 1950-2010, Donatella Galella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Theatre socially reproduces and contests economic, racial, and national hierarchies. There is a dearth of scholarship on U.S. regional theatre because of middlebrow anxiety and yet, for that very reason, regional theatre demands attention as a fitting example of the site of struggle over different forms of capital. Located in Washington, D.C., Arena Stage is the ideal case study for both the invention of viable non-profit theatre and the negotiation of race and national identity in the United States. Arguably the closest institution the U.S. has to a national theatre, the company was the first regional theatre to send a …

Beyond Information: College Choice As A Literacy Practice, Jeremy Samuel Greenfield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Every year more than two million high school seniors prepare for and apply to college. These students visit college websites, write college admission essays, complete online application forms and use digital literacy tools to elicit and share knowledge about college. These literacy practices are central to the college choice process. Nonetheless, few scholars have examined how these practices are experienced by students or framed by the schools these students attend. Guided by Gee's Discourse theory, this study examines how a group of 14 high school seniors who attended a high poverty high school in the Bronx, New York developed the …

To Be Or Not To Be A Math Person: Math Identity Dissonance In Ninth Grade Students, Noah Samuel Heller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What student-level variables (e.g., demographic, attitudes toward math, attitudes toward school, and prior math achievement) affect the construction of a dissonant math identity? Research shows that the number of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations is growing twice as fast as all other industries. Further, math achievement, more than any other academic factor, determines whether students have access to STEM majors in college and thus pursue STEM careers. Concomitantly, numerous studies have shown that the ways in which students identify with mathematics have a profound impact on their immediate performance and future decisions to pursue math and math-related majors …

Negotiating Limits: Boundary Management In The Bondage/Discipline/Sadomasochism (Bdsm) Community, Karen Marie Holt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study sought to gain insight into the attitudes, beliefs, and values that shape Bondage/Discipline/Sadomasochism (BDSM) activities and how participants negotiate and maintain boundaries in order to engage in mutually satisfying BDSM activities. Additionally, this study explored the degree and consequences of unintended or non-negotiated harms, including physical, emotional, and sexual coercion. A qualitative approach consisting of semi-structured interviews and ethnography was used in order to develop an in depth exploration of the lived experiences of participants. Grounded theory was employed to reveal common themes which all supported a symbolic interactionist / dramaturgical understanding of the protective and predatory processes …

Foreign Direct Investment And The Chinese Economy: Theory And Impact, Gerasimos Seriatos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Chinese economy has sustained a high rate of growth during the last three decades. This economic growth has been the outcome of an innovative strategy, which the Chinese leadership has been implementing within the model of the state directed economy. This strategy has been manifested in a variety of tactical moves one of which is the utilization of Foreign Direct Investment as a source of finance and industrial know-how. The argument in this study is that Foreign Direct Investment has positively contributed to the phenomenal growth of the Chinese economy. Moreover, the performance of Foreign Direct Investment in China …

Assumptions Underlying Behavioral Linkage Revisited: A Multidimensional Approach To Ascertaining Individual Differentiation And Consistency In Serial Rape, Marina Sorochinski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While investigative use of behavioral evidence to help link and solve serial offenses has been in use for centuries, the empirical and theoretical grounds for whether and how to use this evidence effectively has begun to emerge only in recent years. In order for behavioral crime linking to be validated, two base assumptions must be met: individual differentiation (i.e., that offenses committed by one offender will be distinctly different from those committed by another offender) and consistency (i.e., that a degree of similarity will be apparent across crimes committed by the same offender). The present study empirically tested (a) the …

Successful Implementation Of Solution-Based Casework; A Child Welfare Casework Practice Model?, Naomi Weisel Schear

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Across the country, child welfare agencies have started to implement casework practice models in an effort to improve the safety, permanency and well-being of vulnerable children and families. In their effort to do so, child welfare systems have faced complex contextual challenges to implementation. To date, however, there has been limited empirical research describing successful implementation of these practices. Moreover, little systematic feedback exists concerning service providers' perspectives of various aspects of the implementation process.

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore child welfare supervisors' and case workers' responses to various methods of implementation of Solution-Based Casework …

Black Like Me? A Narrative Study Of Non-Anglophone Black U.S. Immigrant Selves In The Making, Yvanne Joseph

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished discriminatory national origin quotas that favored European immigrants. The U.S. has since experienced steady flows of immigrants of color. These diverse groups have brought their racial, social, cultural and historical experiences, which adds greater complexity to the existing Black/White and ingroup/outgroup models that shape group relations, and psychological theorizing about identity. This dissertation focuses specifically on the smaller, less visible, yet growing segments of these immigrant populations. It presents a study of the lives of ten individual immigrants of African descent originating from a non-Anglophone country within Africa, Latin America …

Rebellion Under The Palm Trees: Memory, Agrarian Reform And Labor In The Aguán, Honduras, Andres Leon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On December 9, 2009, the Unified Peasant Movement of the Aguán (Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguán; MUCA) occupied over 20,000 hectares of oil palm covered lands in the Aguán region in the Honduran northern coast. This was the latest, and probably most dramatic, chapter in the region's tumultuous recent history. This dissertation explores this history and the process of creation of the Aguán region from the perspective of a set of impoverished peasant families that migrated from different parts of Honduras towards the Aguán from the 1970s onwards, in search of a better present and future.

It asks about the …

Privilege In Haiti: Travails In Color Of The First Bourgeois Nation-State In The Americas, Philippe-Richard Marius

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Who are the elites in the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere? Do Haiti's elites constitute themselves in a Blackness vs. Whiteness/Mulattoness opposition? Through the investigation of these questions, the central thesis of this ethnography emerges as the material unity in privilege of Haiti's colorist fragments. Noirisme, a fundamentalist strain of Haitian black nationalism that reached hegemony in the dictatorship of François Duvalier in the 1960s, is in marked retreat in contemporary Haiti. Its lingering influence nonetheless continues to foster a black qua black sociality among privileged black nationalists. Mulatto nationalism as political project and public discourse lapsed into …

Proust's Medusa: Ovid, Evolution, And Modernist Metamorphosis, Gregory John Mercurio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ovid's Metamorphoses has served as an indispensable text for Modernism, not least for such foundational Modernists as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis. This dissertation examines how these writers characteristically employ Ovidian metamorphoses with a specifically evolutionary inflection, particularly in a post- Darwinian world informed by varying -often authoritarian- notions of biological adaptation, as well as an increasing emphasis on Mendalian genetics as the determining factor in what would become known as the Modern Synthesis in evolutionary theory. Using the theoretical platforms of both Queer Theory and Object Ontology, this dissertation proposes that a more pluralized, less authoritative …

The Impact Of Technology On Consumerism, David Naranjo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

E-commerce is shifting the way people purchase their goods and services and affecting the relationship between technology and society. Consequently, traditional retailers, aware of the inevitable change, have developed strategies to keep up with the continuously evolving marketplace. These strategies vary from creating virtual stores (i.e., websites) and developing digital social networks to data mining and spamming.

Therefore, from a historical point of view, this thesis will analyze the impact of technology on commerce and how the creation of new virtual marketplaces had affected consumers' behavior. This thesis will explore the origins of e-commerce, the technologies that made possible its …

Collisions Of The Personal And The Public In Post-Realignment California: How Women And Front-Line Workers Manage Post-Incarceration Work, Megan Welsh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines a largely taken-for-granted aspect of post-incarceration life: the various forms of work associated with rebuilding one's life, and how this work is organized by the institutions that typically process individuals who are reentering society from prison or jail. This project also considers how post-incarceration work has changed in one California county under the Public Safety Realignment Act of 2011 and the subsequent changes made to the state's penal policies as implemented through Assembly Bill 109 (AB 109).

Rooted in the principles of institutional ethnography, a mode of inquiry that examines work processes and how they are coordinated, …

The Measure Of A Man: The Role Of Measurement In Shaping Our Understanding Of College Graduation Along Ethnic Lines, Andrew Middleton Wallace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The way in which college graduation is modeled matters with regard to the conclusions that a researcher is able to draw from the data. This dissertation explores different approaches to modeling degree pursuit and graduation that have implications for how researchers should model graduation. These implications include measuring degree pursued at entry to and exit from college to account for changes in level. Associate students who transfer to the baccalaureate level in particular are important to measure because of how different their outcomes are compared to associate students who stay at the associate level. Further, a variety of ways of …

Modernity, Parallel Editing, And The Flâneuse: Examining The White Slave Narrative In Early And Contemporary American Cinema, Alex W. Bordino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores cinema and the conceptual presence of Charles Baudelaire's nineteenth century flâneur; in particular, it examines how this modernist notion relates to cinematic technique and issues associated with female spectatorship through an analysis of the white slave genre in both early and contemporary American cinema. Seven early films are examined: How They Do Things on the Bowery (Porter, 1903), The Boy Detective, or The Abductors Foiled (McCutcheon, 1908), The Fatal Hour (Griffith, 1908), The Miser's Heart (Griffith, 1911), The Muskateers of Pig Alley (Griffith, 1911), The Inside of the White Slave Traffic (Beal, 1913), and Traffic in Souls …