Digital Commons Network^™

The Conflicts Of Coexistence: Contested Meanings Of Carnivore Management And Conservation In The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Hannah F. Jaicks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) encompasses urbanizing areas adjacent to essential conservation habitat with an inimitable capacity to support carnivore populations, including grizzly bears, wolves, and cougars. This geography has resulted in divisive social conflicts about these animals’ management as well as physical conflicts when they come into contact with people over the course of daily life in the region. Employing a qualitative methodology with semi-structured interviews, participant observation, wilderness treks, and archival work, this study examines the context, social processes, and decision-making processes that underlie the predator conflicts and produce management challenges in the GYE. This approach integrates theory …

The Impact Of Affect On Neural Mechanisms Underlying Orientation Perception, Michelle L. Fowler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The underlying mechanisms used to process 2D visual information to form a unified 3D percept of the world remain largely unknown. Previous work in our lab has shown that accurate 3D perception of textured surfaces depends on the presence of specific patterns of orientation flows in the retinal image. Recent research has shown that affective state may influence the visual perception of oriented patterns. Relative to neutral face stimuli, fearful face stimuli have been shown to increase sensitivity to orientation of low spatial frequency patterns and decrease sensitivity to orientation of high spatial frequency patterns. How affective state influences the …

From Coercion To Consent?: Governing The Formerly Incarcerated In The 21st Century United States, Karen G. Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With over 650,000 incarcerated people returning to their home communities each year, prisoner reentry reform has recently become as an important strand of penal policy innovation intended to address the barriers that former offenders face. Through ethnographic research in four correctional institutions in the Midwest, I trace the use of evidence-based practices and policies as they relate to prisoner reentry and risk reduction. This dissertation intervenes in the debates on mass incarceration and prisoner reentry and offers insights on how evidence-based practices and policies are being mobilized to mitigate the costs of mass incarceration. I show how the scientization of …

The Impact Of Foster Care On Depression: An Examination Of Placement Type And Mental Health Service Utilization Among Children And Adolescents, Kisha Cummings

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Children and adolescents in foster care with a history of complex trauma such as neglect, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse have a greater odds of being clinically diagnosed with depression in adulthood compared to children and adolescents without such a history. The current study examines the prevalence of depression in a national sample of children and adolescents aged 7 to 17 years. This study asks whether a) foster care is associated with a greater prevalence of depression among children and adolescents in foster care compared to children and adolescents not in foster care; b) there is an association between …

A Passage From Brooklyn To Ithaca: The Sea, The City And The Body In The Poetics Of Walt Whitman And C. P. Cavafy, Michael P. Skafidas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This treatise is the first extensive comparative study of Walt Whitman and C. P. Cavafy. Despite the abundant scholarship dealing with the work and life of each, until now no critic has put the two poets together. Whitman’s poetry celebrates birth, youth, the self and the world as seen for the first time, while Cavafy’s diverts from the active present to resurrect a world whose key, in Eliot’s terms, is memory. Yet, I see the two poets conversing in the crossroads of the fin de siècle; the American Whitman and the Greek Cavafy embody the antithesis of hope and dislocation …

Response And Responsibility: The War Veterans’ Art Center At The Museum Of Modern Art (1944–48), Laurel Humble

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From 1944–48 the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) offered free art classes to World War II veterans through an experimental educational initiative called the War Veterans’ Art Center. This project was run by Victor D’Amico, who served as the museum’s first Director of Education from 1937–69. Building on an existing institutional ethos of experimentation and civil service, D’Amico and his colleagues explored the role of creative engagement in facilitating the transition from military service to civilian life. As they experimented with new pedagogical approaches, they also worked to articulate and share their innovative methods with other professionals and …

Preparing Teachers To Work With Students With Emotional Regulation Difficulties, Dana E. Gottesman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Difficulty with emotional regulation is a symptom common to many child psychological disorders and classroom-related problems. However, many children with emotional regulation difficulties do not receive adequate support in their classrooms. Although a variety of procedures have been used to help students improve their emotional regulation, there are very few studies that focus on training teachers to deliver classroom-based interventions that are designed to target a broad range of children with difficulties in emotional regulation. This current investigation measured the impact of a professional development program on emotional regulation on teachers’ responses to students with emotional regulation difficulties and their …

The Effect Of Attitudes Towards The Death Penalty On Forensic Clinical Judgments Of Competency For Execution, Eugenia Garcia-Dubus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Capital punishment has been a part of the American Justice System since colonial times. A brief historical overview reveals a general tendency towards the imposition of restrictions on who is eligible for the death penalty (DP). In a series of decisions, the Supreme Court has held that the execution of an incompetent inmate is unconstitutional, but the topic is controversial among mental health professionals. The likelihood of clinician attitudes towards the DP affecting judgments of competency for execution (CFE) is discussed in the context of existing literature. The vagueness of the current CFE standard is thought to contribute to this …

The Effect Of Cognitive Load On Liars And Truth Tellers: Exploring The Moderating Impact Of Working Memory Capacity, Sarah Jordan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Two studies are presented. The purpose of the first study is to examine the moderating impact of working memory capacity (WMC) on the cognitive load produced by both the type of statement a person is making and the manner in which the person is interviewed in a mock crime scenario. The moderating impact of suspects’ WMC (measured using the automated operation span task) on this process was also assessed. Suspects were instructed to tell the truth, a relatively easy lie, or a more difficult lie. Suspects were then interviewed in a relatively easy manner, a moderately more difficult manner, or …

Re-Framing Informal Family Caregiving, Magdalena T. Ornstein-Sloan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Informal family caregivers are the backbone of the long-term care system, providing an estimated 80% of the long-term care in the United States. Caregivers provide care to people with disabilities, the ill and older adults, often with little to no outside assistance from the formal long-term care system. Although caregivers receive attention in the academic literature, mainstream media and within public policy and services development, caregiver services continue to remain underutilized. The focus on service provision has various goals, including the desire to lessen the burden caregivers experience by providing services so they can provide care at home longer than …

Healthy Beginnings: Exploring The Impact Of Parental Stress And Relationship Quality On Birth Outcomes, Anna A. Divney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three studies exploring the effects of maternal and paternal experiences of stress and perceptions of relationship quality on length of gestation and birth weight. The first study assessed the association of parental relationship quality with the baby’s length of gestation and birth weight among 2,072 families in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. Romantic relationships can be a substantial source of social support as well as stress, and have been shown to influence many health outcomes. Beyond crude relationship characteristics, however, few studies have assessed the association of other dimensions of relationship quality, such as …

Studies In The Creation And Implementation Of School Cultures: Two New York City Stand-Alone Charter Schools, Olivia-Beate A. Franzini

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the last thirty years the United States has seen a rise in charter school education and with that an influx of discussion over the best way to successfully educate college and career ready students. Many of these charter schools have their own unique philosophy on education and disciplinary codes to aid in the attainment of their success. The following case studies were conducted through participant observation in two start-up charter schools. At the time of study both institutions were in their second year of creation. These schools have opposing philosophies on education; the first School “A” is an independent …

An Analysis Of Technological Features Enabled Management Of Information Facets, Jim Samuel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Information age and big-data phenomena have created numerous and complex challenges in the form increasing information overload, information uncertainty and equivocality of information. Amidst this unparalleled deluge, it has become critical for organizations to optimize their information management efforts. Simultaneously, the growth of intelligent technologies has presented new opportunities for the use of technology-enabled features to process, comprehend and address informational challenges in meaningful ways. Past research has prioritized the importance of managing equivocality over other information facets. Equivocality of information, given its inherent and often conflictive multiplicity of meaning, can lead to significant loss of decision quality. Therefore the …

The Effect Of The Long Anchor Duration On Performance In The Temporal Bisection Procedure, Sho Araiba

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study investigated the determinants of the location of the bisection point (BP) in the temporal bisection procedure. Interest in the study of temporal perception emerged from the finding of the scalar property such as Weber’s law for time and the ratio rule in behavior under Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning. One method to investigate temporal perception in both non-human animals and humans is the temporal bisection procedure. The primary dependent variable of this procedure is the BP, which has been taken as the subjective midpoint between two durations. The ratio similarity rule (Gibbon, 1981) hypothesizes that the location of …

The Bauhaus Wall Painting Workshop: Mural Painting To Wallpapering, Art To Product, Morgan Ridler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The wall painting workshop at the Bauhaus was established in fall 1919, the first semester of the famed and influential German school of art, architecture, and design. Over the course of the next thirteen years, the workshop experimented with many techniques, philosophies, and strategies for painting, coloring, and covering wall surfaces. This dissertation analyzes the evolving approaches of the Bauhaus wall painting workshop. Early Masters of Form, Oskar Schlemmer and Wassily Kandinsky, oversaw abstract and figurative murals like those developed for the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, and the student wall painters used color to form and mold architectural spaces in, for …

Empowerment From Within: Supporting Palestinian Women’S Struggle Against Violence, Ortal Bensky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent reports by the United Nations and local non-governmental organizations present a troubling increase in incidents of violence against Palestinian women in Palestine. These are cases of domestic violence, where the attackers are Palestinians, and political violence, where the attackers are Israeli settlers and soldiers. These violent incidents include attacks on body and property. Most incidents are neither dealt with by the Palestinian authorities nor by the Israeli government and judicial system. There is not sufficient international pressure to enforce justice. The purpose of this study is to offer alternative ways to prevent violent crimes, enforce relevant laws, and provide …

Expecting Success: Factors Influencing Ninth Graders' Science Self-Efficacy, Elizabeth Donahue

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What factors influence ninth grade students’ expectations for success in science? Using social cognitive theory and bioecological systems theory as theoretical frameworks, this dissertation employs data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) to examine the relative impact of teacher practices and their perceived attitudes on students’ science self-efficacy. Further, as they relate to this broader issue, the relative impact of student subjective task value and teacher characteristics is also investigated.

It has been well documented that U.S. students are not achieving at satisfactory levels in science. Education policy has focused on improving science teacher quality as one …

What Are The Barriers And Conduits To College Success For Academically Vulnerable Students?, Marisol Zacarias

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What are the barriers and conduits to college success for academically vulnerable students? Employing two theoretical frameworks—ecological systems theory and intersectionality—this thesis interrogates two concepts: grit/persistence and support. To do this, data were collected from a group of academically vulnerable students of color from low-income backgrounds via two methodologically different venues: a focus group in 2012 and follow-up one-on-one interviews two years later, in 2014. From the focus group, two themes emerged: discouraging messages and hope. Two years later the follow-up one-on-one interviews produced two additional themes: balancing act and support. Building positive peer relationships was identified as a key …

Transparent Interiors: Detective And Mystery Fiction In The Age Of Photography, Melissa D. Dunn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a meditation on the mutable boundaries that define interior life in the age of photography. I probe these boundaries through selected readings in two literary genres that share conceptual links with photography—detective fiction and mystery fiction. Photography plays an important role in a radical reconsideration of the boundaries between public and private, engaging two dominant and often conflicting cultural values that shape American life at the turn of the twentieth century—the mandate to define and protect privacy and the simultaneous call for greater transparency in public and personal life. Photography, through its perceived transgressions against private life, …

The Fictions Of Whiteness: Transatlantic Race Science, Gender, Nationalism, And The Construction Of Race In Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (1823-1867), Philip E. Kadish

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fictions of Whiteness argues that political beliefs preceded and determined the race science theories which nineteenth century American white novelists applied or invoked in their work, the inverse of the current critical consensus. For issues ranging from Indian removal to slavery and Reconstruction, and utilizing theories from of Condorcet, Buffon, Camper, Louis Agassiz, James Pritchard, Johannes Blumenbach, and George Borrow these authors shifted allegiances to divergent race theories between and within works, applied those theories selectively to white, black, and Indians characters, and applied the same scientific race theories to politically divergent rhetorical ends. By analyzing shifting application of different …

Status Signaling And The Characterization Of A Chirp-Like Signal In The Weakly Electric Fish Steatogenys Elegans, Caitlin E. Field

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sensory systems are critical to both exploratory and communicatory processes, the study of which is critical to our understanding of how animals perceive and respond to their environments. In weakly electric fishes the electrosensory system is utilized for both of these purposes. One type of communication, status signaling, is widespread across taxa and frequently hormonally modulated. This hormonal modulation keeps the signal honest, wherein the status of the sender and the production of the status signal itself are both hormone dependent. We investigated exploratory and communicatory strategies of the electromotor system in pulse-type gymnotiforms, with a focus on status communication …

Problem And Adaptive Behavior Levels In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders As Predictors Of Sibling Adjustment, Hallie Solarsh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among adaptive and problem behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and stress, personal adjustment and behavior of typically developing siblings. The participants were 53 sets of parents and typically developing siblings of children with ASDs, recruited from the tri-state New York area. The siblings were between the ages of 8-18 years. Parent participants completed three questionnaires including: 1) The Nisonger Parent Behavior Rating Form, 2) The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale-Second Edition, and 3) The Behavior Assessment System for Children-Second Edition, Parent Report. Typically developing siblings completed 1) The …

Wandering In Contemporary Literature: A Narrative Theory Of Cognition, Hillel E. Broder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study offers a theory of wandering cognition as an animating feature of western literature, in general, and of contemporary literature, in particular. Unlike existing theories of peripatetic bodies and minds in fiction that focus primarily on political critiques, cultural practices, or pleasures of digression, this theory of wandering offers an aesthetic philosophy and ethical critique of representing cognition, memory, and narrative identity that finds affinities in the political, phenomenological, and ethical thought of Walter Benjamin, Emmanuel Levinas, and Giorgio Agamben.

Unlike existing cognitive theories of literature that apply cognitive theory to literary study (or vice versa), this study develops …

Shadows And Light. Ernie Gehr Exhibitions At The Museum Of Modern Art, Sean M. Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines exhibitions and media installations of Ernie Gehr’s work at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), beginning with the pivotal 1970 show Information, which presented four films by Gehr. Wait (1968), Transparency (1969), Reverberation (1969), and History (1970) were screened alongside work by other avant-garde filmmakers and video artists in a circular viewing booth in the gallery space, in a show featuring works now considered masterpieces of conceptual art. It also considers the two site-specific video works, MoMA on Wheels (2002) and Navigation (2002), which Gehr created for the lobby space at MoMA QNS, …

Alien, Illegal, Undocumented: Labeling, Context, And Worldview In The Immigration Debate And In The Lives Of Undocumented Youth, David A. Caicedo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A key element of investigating attitudes towards unauthorized immigrants in the United States has been political orientation, yet few studies have examined the influence of such orientation on labels relevant to the immigration debate. The current dissertation project examined these attitudes among young adults using survey, focus group, and interview methodologies. Level of agreement on various statements regarding unauthorized immigrants was examined in Study I, definitions given for the labels ‘illegal’ and ‘undocumented’ were explored in Study II, and the lived experience of undocumented youth in two community colleges was investigated in Study III. It was hypothesized that: I) attitudes …

Madison Vanguard: A Novel, Berni Moestafa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project takes the form of a popular fiction novel that introduces parts of the academic discussion on capitalism to a wider audience through storytelling. Using a fictional fiscal crisis in New York as its setting, the novel discusses the relationship between capitalism and democracy. It therefore aims to address the underrepresentation of the debate on capitalism in popular entertainment and raise awareness about some of the debate’s key issues.

Popular culture be that music, film, books, media, videogames or advertisement surround our lives and expose us to a plethora of messages that help shape our understanding of the …

Re-Examining The Bilingual Advantage On Interference-Control And Task-Switching Tasks: A Meta-Analysis, Seamus Donnelly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A much-debated topic in psycholinguistics is whether lifelong bilingualism enhances executive functions (EF), the set of higher-order cognitive processes involved in the control of thought and action. Several researchers have predicted bilingual advantages on various EF tasks, especially interference-control and task-switching tasks. Many studies have tested these predictions, but results have proven unreliable. As a complementary approach to recent quantitative syntheses on this topic, the present dissertation tests whether the bilingual advantage is moderated by a number of theoretically significant variables: dependent variable (DV), task, age, age of L2 acquisition and lab.

Two meta-analyses were conducted. Study 1 considered interference-control …

Locked In: Melancholia In The Modern American Prison Literature Of R. Dwayne Betts And Jarvis Jay Masters, Johnna Scrabis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the theme of melancholia in the writing of currently and formerly incarcerated African American men during the late 20^th and early 21^st century. Melancholia, with its rich history in literature from ancient times to the present, is discernable in the works of many people with prison experience. In their writing, melancholia is expressed primarily as a loss and as a disconnection with time, as well as an empowering creative force. The work of Jarvis Jay Masters and R. Dwayne Betts reflects the paradox of melancholia: just as it shows the depressive element of the condition, …

African American Young People's Views Of Youth Participation And Its Implications For Addressing Community Problems, Isabelle M. Elisha

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Youth participation has been brought to the forefront of scholarly concerns by a growing interest in the positive effects of youth participation on developmental outcomes. However, few studies have investigated within group variations in African American young people’s views of civic participation. The present study examined African American early adolescents’ perceptions of youth participation in resolving community problems. Using a written protocol instrument with open-ended questions, the present study elicited diverse narratives from thirty-one 11-14 year old African American adolescents in order to address within-group variations in their experiences with youth participation and their understanding of racial discrimination. Participants described …

Animal Performance In Big-Time Vaudeville, Catherine M. Young

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Animal vaudevillians have been neglected by academic accounts of vaudeville. Drawing on the rapidly proliferating and highly interdisciplinary field of animal studies, this dissertation combines archival research and cultural theory to fill an important gap in our understanding of how animal bodies and images circulated during the vaudeville era. Taking up Nicole Shukin’s notion of animal capital as both animal “signs and substances” circulating in cultures of capital, I argue that vaudeville animal acts theatricalized animal capital for US citizen-consumers and often circulated animalized capital via racist ideologies and performance modes.

Theatre bookers balanced their reliance on animal acts …