Digital Commons Network^™

Eritrean Refugees Between Securitization And Survival Along The Sahara Route To Egypt, Zeina Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

Eritrea remains one of the largest refugee-producing countries in the world, with mandatory military conscription serving as a primary driver of displacement. This thesis examines the precarious journey of Eritrean refugees across the Sahara Desert en route to Egypt, situating this movement within the broader context of border securitization. It argues that the journey itself constitutes a critical and often overlooked phase of the migration process, as significant as both departure and destination.

Drawing on migration infrastructure theory and migrant network theory, this study foregrounds Eritrean refugees’ agency and resilience. It analyzes how refugees mobilize knowledge, digital technologies, social networks, …

From Planned To Lived: Street-Level Transformation And The Production Of Urban Space In New Cairo, Seba Abouyoussef

Theses and Dissertations

Egypt's new cities program has produced four generations of satellite developments, yet none have been systematically evaluated for how they perform once inhabited. Each is planned as a prototype — functionally zoned, automobile-oriented, image-driven — with little regard for the social, cultural, and behavioral dynamics that will shape it. This thesis examines the gap between the planned city and the lived city by tracing how three streets in New Cairo transformed over a fifteen-year period (2010–2025) through everyday use, stakeholder interaction, and pivotal trigger events.

The research follows a qualitative, multi-phase methodology — combining historical and physical mapping, behavioral observation, …

Topographies Of Being: World-Making And Ontological Formation In Modern Saint Catherine, South Sinai, Ahmad Mahana

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploration of the ecological and sociological processes involved in the production of the socionatural space of the contemporary town and natural protectorate of Saint Catherine, South Sinai. Revered by all Abrahamic religions as the site of the Great Theophany, the town has perpetually been considered an area of immense spiritual and natural significance. In recent decades, however, the town has undergone a series of modernizing campaigns that have not only threatened the region’s natural environment and indigenous lifeways but have also jeopardized the plurality of its extant lifeworlds. By relying on a variety of ethnographic methods, …

Circulating Futures: Infrastructure, Value, And The Making Of Contemporary Egypt, Yasmine Abdeldayem

Theses and Dissertations

Since 2014, Egypt has undertaken an unprecedented expansion of its road network as part of a broader project of territorial development and national renewal. Roads are presented in this project as the connective infrastructure through which new cities, investment zones, and desert territories are brought into circulation. Yet their developmental effects are often difficult to discern: infrastructure is rapidly built but unevenly maintained, while projects justified in terms of mobility, growth, and public benefit can produce dispossession, exclusion, and new forms of risk. This thesis argues that roads cannot be understood solely through the developmental outcomes they are intended to …

Technology, Power, And Colonial Modernity: The Making Of The Egyptian Railways, Ahmed Mohamed Rahmy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Egyptian railways as a technology of power through which modern temporal order was gradually formed, reorganized, and contested. Focusing on the period from 1850 to 1920, it argues that railway infrastructure did more than facilitate mobility, economic exchange, and imperial administration: it reorganized the temporal relations through which social life was governed and experienced. Timetables, standardized schedules, fares, penalties, stations, and administrative procedures made punctuality, regularity, and measurable time appear as neutral requirements of life, while positioning existing ecological, agricultural, religious, and communal rhythms as signs of backwardness.

The thesis draws on British official correspondence, parliamentary debates, …

The Smuggled Body: Embodied Experiences Of Sudanese Displacement Along The Sudan–Egypt Corridor, Marielys Padua Soto

Theses and Dissertations

The outbreak of conflict in Sudan in April 2023 triggered one of the world's largest displacement crises, forcing millions of Sudanese civilians to flee toward neighboring countries, particularly Egypt. As legal pathways became increasingly restricted following Egypt's tightening of visa policies, many asylum seekers relied on migrant smuggling networks to reach safety. This thesis examines how restrictive mobility regimes are materially experienced through the body by introducing the concept of the smuggled body, defined as the body through which the physical, emotional, and social consequences of border control, irregular mobility, and forced displacement are lived. Drawing on embodiment theory, border …

The Game Within: An Anthropological Approach To Games And Play, Nehal Maged Mohamed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is based on an eighteen-month ethnography of El Ghawasa, an Egyptian play-based organization that designs educational games, tools, and services. Claiming that El Ghawasa, with its ethos of play, seeks to create an alternative to the capitalist corporate structure. Through tracking how this organization navigates ruptures, negotiates constraints, and experiments with different practices and internal restructuring, I explore the possibilities and limitations of El Ghawasa, while attempting to resist absorption by the very system it opposes. I ask: when the rules keep changing (while the logic of the capitalist corporate structure remains the same), and the boundaries of …

"Tithing Is An Insurance Premium": A Framing Analysis Of Speaker Innovation And Diachronic Trends In Latter-Day Saint Religious Discourse, Reid Empey

Theses and Dissertations

Religious language relies on shared metaphor and frames that contextualize religious experience and practice. Current approaches to frame semantics (Fillmore 1982) and cognitive metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) lend important insight into religious language, particularly in describing the role that figurative language serves in a religious speech community. However, a vital component of many religious speech communities is the presence of and engagement with a scriptural canon, which often contains metaphorical and framing language that religious speakers can directly reference. Yet, past conceptualizations of speech communities have not accounted for this engagement with a shared canon. To illustrate the role …

Tubuh Yang Mengingat (The Body Remembers): Ecology, Ritual, And Embodied Memory In Contemporary Cirebon Mask Performance, Prameswari Mrajabwana

Theses and Dissertations

Tubuh yang Mengingat (The Body Remembers) is a single-channel, site-specific performance film set across coastal and extractive landscapes in Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia. Reinterpreting the five transformations of Cirebonese mask dance—Panji, Pamindo, Rumyang, Tumenggung, and Kelana—the project examines how colonial extraction, ecological deterioration, and systems of social regulation continue to shape embodied experience materially and somatically. Drawing from Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action and Stacy Alaimo’s notion of trans-corporeality, the work approaches body, land, technology, and history as relationally entangled rather than separate entities. Through live biodata sonification generated from environmental sensors and bodily movement, the film establishes …

Repetition As Ritual Structure: Sound, Movement, And Electrodermal Activity In A Hmong Shaman Ceremony, Maile Williams

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between repetitive sound, physiological arousal, and embodied participation in a Hmong shamanic ritual. Drawing on scholarship about music, trance, absorption, repetition, and Hmong ritual journeying and communication, I consider how sonic layers such as chant, rattle and gong help structure ritual time and sustain the shaman's altered state. The project uses electrodermal activity (EDA) data from wearable sensors, video and audio recordings, and my own event coding of sonic and physical activity during a selected 30-minute section of a recorded Hmong shaman ceremony. By aligning EDA data with a timeline of chanting, rattling, gong playing, …

The Tagamo3 Accent: Linguistic Stylization, Enregisterment, And Social Meaning In Egyptian Digital Discourse, Jannah M. Abdelaziz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the Tagamo3 Accent (TA), a socially recognizable speech style associated with elite urban Egyptian identity, through a qualitative multimodal discourse analysis of twelve Egyptian TikTok videos, including both naturally occurring lifestyle and influencer content as well as parody and commentary videos that explicitly imitate, discuss, or evaluate the accent. Drawing on theories of enregisterment (Agha, 2003), stylization (Coupland, 2007), and indexicality (Silverstein, 2003; Eckert, 2008), the study examines how TA is linguistically performed, socially recognized, and ideologically circulated within Egyptian digital spaces. The findings suggest that TA does not function as a structurally bounded dialect or geographically …

Documenting Death: A Question Of Sovereignty In The Cairo Geniza, Thomas Adkins

Theses and Dissertations

How can death offer a case study for the question of sovereignty in eleventh to thirteenth century Egypt as it was performed by sovereigns, officials, and subjects alike, and, in this context, how can the documentary practices preserved in the Geniza be understood as an instrument to perform sovereignty? This thesis uses death as a case study in the same way that scholars of the medieval Islamic world have studied taxation, administration, and ceremonials to understand sovereignty as it was performed by the state, officials, and subjects. This performance of sovereignty by each implicated actor left a rich documentary trail, …

The Case For The Exclusion Of Exclusion: Intellectual Property, Masculine Legal Reason, And The Ethics Of Care, Ragya Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that current legal ideals of objectivity and neutrality are historically gendered and inseparable from the development of capitalist property relations and imperial expansion. It traces origins that begin with early modern witch hunts and Francis Bacon’s empiricism, where a new “scientific rationality” emerges alongside intensified patriarchal violence. The thesis then examines John Locke’s labour-based justification of property and the figure of the rational individual, showing how this framework legitimizes enclosure, dispossession and colonial appropriation under the guise of improvement and development. Building on this foundation, the analysis turns to moral psychology and how its allegedly universal stage …

Assessing Psychological Trauma And Resilience In Collegiate Ems Providers: A Quantitative Study Of Risk And Protective Factors, Maribeth Olivia Novsak

Theses and Dissertations

Collegiate Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers are routinely exposed to potentially traumatic events while simultaneously managing academic responsibilities, yet limited research has examined psychological outcomes within this population. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among trauma exposure, PTSD symptom severity, resilience, and perceived social support among collegiate EMS providers. A quantitative, cross-sectional design was employed using a self-report survey administered to collegiate EMS personnel across multiple institutions. The final sample consisted of 26 participants. Results indicated that trauma exposure was significantly positively associated with PTSD symptom severity, suggesting that increased exposure to critical incidents is linked …

Tracing Hazing Across Adolescence: Examining How Prior Hazing Experiences Shape Hazing Motivation And Tolerance Among Newly Initiated Ifc Fraternity Members, John Michael Vanhorn

Theses and Dissertations

Hazing remains pervasive and underreported, disproportionately affecting adolescent and emerging adult men, particularly within athletic teams and fraternity contexts. Although hazing is most often studied within collegiate organizations, many students encounter hazing behaviors prior to college, yet little is known about how these early experiences shape later hazing perceptions, motivations, tolerance, and masculine norms. Grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s Process-Person-Context-Time (PPCT) model, this dissertation conceptualizes hazing as a developmental process shaped by repeated social interactions, individual characteristics, contextual environments, and time across adolescence and emerging adulthood. Using a two-paper approach with a quantitative, longitudinal survey design, study 1 examined fraternity new members’ …

Assessing Differences In The Frequency And Severity Of Osteoarthritis On The Mandibular Condyles Between Males And Females At Tell Abraq, Brittany C. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Tell Abraq, a Bronze and Iron Age site in the United Arab Emirates, was a center of trade and cultural expansion during the Umm an-Nar period (2700–2100 BCE). Its multichambered tombs contain large, commingled burials, reflecting increasing sedentism and agricultural practices. This study examines mandibular osteoarthritis (OA) to explore lived experience and biomechanical stress. A total of 138 adult mandibles were analyzed for sex and OA severity. Results show generally mild and infrequent OA, though preservation limited analysis. Sex estimates suggested more gracile morphologies than previously identified. No strong sex-based differences in OA were observed. Overall, findings highlight the impact …

Contested Surveillance: Gendered Citizenship And Political Participation In Egypt And Lebanon, Mohamad Zarif

Theses and Dissertations

While the 2011 Arab Uprisings were famously framed by the utopian narrative of a 'Facebook Revolution', this view has given way to a dystopian reality in which digital infrastructures can facilitate authoritarian retrenchment. This thesis interrogates how lowermiddle- and working-class precarious youth navigate and perceive this "Architecture of Control" in Cairo and Beirut. Using a comparative qualitative design with purposive and snowball sampling, this research integrates digital ethnography and fourteen interviews with eighteen participants (nine women, seven men) to capture lived experiences of surveillance rather than the internal logic of state security institutions. The study yields three primary findings. First, …

Fishing, Butchery And Smoking: Salmonids In Northeastern Iceland, Quinn Matthew Habedank

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the ethnoecology of Northern Iceland from 1880-1920 via the zooarchaeology of salmonid remains. Based on the identification of salmonid bones retrieved from Hofstaðir, the people living at the farm likely engaged in small-scale production of transportable fish products based on locally available wild resources.

The Effectiveness Of Utilizing An Arts-Integrated Approach With Students With Ieps In Grades K–5 Self-Contained Classrooms And Why An Arts-Integrated Approach Is Not Widely Implemented In The United States, Alexandra Leff

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines arts integration as an approach for K–5 students with IEPs. Drawing on research from Western and non-Western and data from two programs, it shows gains in academic achievement and social-emotional learning. Despite cultural and systemic barriers, findings support expanding arts integration through teacher training and policy reform.

Sonic Rupture And Embodied Politics:
Reconfiguring The Aesthetic Regime In The Syrian Uprising, Lynn Shabani

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that the Syrian uprising of 2011 emerged as a sonic and embodied rupture within an authoritarian aesthetic regime that had long governed public sensibility. Through chants, song, and coordinated movement, political agency took form as collective, affective practice, transforming vernacular repertoires into infrastructures of mobilization, audibility, and resistance.

Real Mom Fake Mom, Marisa Kriangwiwat

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis exhibition examines how contemporary photographic perception is conditioned by digital interfaces and attention economies. The thesis artwork I make tries to trace an understand the bodily affects of looking at mass images online.

Signs In The Landscape: Authenticity, Ambiguity, And The Work Of Richard Long, Heather Green-Gulez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Richard Long’s walking-based practice as a sustained and direct engagement with lived experience, tracing his development through walking landscapes, marking, and documentation. It negotiates tensions between reductive and hermeneutic readings, ultimately arguing that Long gestures toward pre-agrarian land ethics, raising broader questions of authenticity in modern life.

Containment, Quin Mittelstead

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores “containment" (the act of keeping something within limits) as both oppressive control and a mode of self-regulation, grounded in the author’s experience with epilepsy. Paintings deploy grayscale grounds, restrained palettes, and contrasting rapid/slow gestures; emergent color, texture, and altered substrates map psychological states, bodily impulses, and reactive processes. Research into witchcraft, remedial items, and eugenics (notably Buck v. Bell) informs works that link historical censorship and institutional violence to contemporary stigma. Sculptural installations (nets, jute, flawed Faraday-like enclosures) and cannibalized studio materials probe systems that restrain thought, media, and bodies. By introducing unpredictable variables with found supports, …

From Homeland To The Foreign Classroom: The Salaysay Of Filipina Immigrant Teachers In Texas, Shanna Cui Miranda

Theses and Dissertations

Filipina immigrant teachers are a growing presence in Texas schools, especially as districts respond to teacher shortages by recruiting internationally trained educators. This narrative study explores the salaysay of Filipina immigrant teachers in Texas and examines how their funds of knowledge inform their teaching practice. Guided by the research question, What are the salaysay of Filipina immigrant teachers in Texas, and how do their funds of knowledge inform their teaching? The study uses Funds of Knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) as the central framework and resizes it to focus on teachers as holders of culturally developed knowledge. The resized framework …

The Effects Of Ai Adoption On Digital Entrepreneurial Intention: A Meta-Analysis, Xandra Precious Okori

Theses and Dissertations

AI adoption and its widespread use have sparked debates about the future of work, job displacement, and the evolving entrepreneurial landscape. While AI is often seen as a threat to traditional employment, research shows that this emerging technology is more likely to change task structures rather than eliminate entire occupations or industries. This shows that there are new entrepreneurial opportunities, particularly digital, that potential entrepreneurs can venture into. This thesis uses a meta-analytic approach to study the relationship between AI adoption and digital entrepreneurial intention, addressing inconsistencies in current research.

Following PRISMA guidelines, a comprehensive search was conducted across Web …

The San José De Laguna Mission: Christian Iconography Through The Lens Of Pueblo Oral Traditions, Natalie Sims Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations

The San José de Laguna Mission was constructed in 1699 in modern New Mexico. Following on the heels of the second Pueblo revolt, it stands as a testament to the Pueblo adoption of Christian symbols in the portrayal of their own oral traditions. A central theme in the Laguna oral tradition is the complementary nature of masculine and feminine forces that make up the universe. The Christian figures of the altar screen, such as Saint Joseph, Saint John Nepomuck, Saint Barbara, and the Trinity, can be interpreted through the lens of the Pueblo oral tradition regarding a 19th century Laguna …

The Relational Good Life: Entrepreneurship Education And Grounded Sumak Kawsay In Otavalo, Ecuador, Vanessa I. Lozano Hardman

Theses and Dissertations

Indigenous Kichwa communities in Ecuador’s Otavalo region have long participated in local and transnational markets, historically as mindalaes, specialized traders of the northern Andes. Yet in recent years, international development-oriented NGOs have framed entrepreneurship education as newly necessary for economic development. These approaches emphasize individualized narratives of vision, self-reliance, and growth, often characterizing Indigenous peoples as lacking entrepreneurial skills or the appropriate mindset. Drawing on ethnographic research with youth, mothers, and teachers at Saminay–El Legado, an agro- technical, intercultural bilingual secondary school (UECIB) in the parish of San José de Quichinche, this article examines how entrepreneurship education intersects with grounded …

Answers “Go By Water”: Felt Knowledge As An Alternative Epistemology In Othello, Annalisa Gulbrandsen

Theses and Dissertations

William Shakespeare's Othello is fundamentally a play about epistemology--how does one know what he/she knows amidst the sea of words, evidence, and misdirection? Traditionally, the problem of knowledge in Othello has been treated as an intellectual problem of the mind. However, this thesis argues that the play purposefully draws attention to the limits of what the mind can know by way of the eye (what is seen) and ear (what is spoken or heard), instead offering an alternative epistemology that is felt through embodiment. When Desdemona's words no longer have the power to affect what Othello believes, Desdemona's answers to …

The Artificial Maintenance Of Relationship Satisfaction: Romantic Ai Companion Usage Sustains Emerging Adults' Human Romantic Relationship Satisfaction While Eroding Relationship Stability, Rebekah M. Hakala

Theses and Dissertations

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly sophisticated, romantic AI companions--AI systems designed to simulate romantic, emotional, or sexual relationships--have emerged as a novel relational phenomenon. Nearly one in four emerging adults now engage with romantic AI companions, yet little is known about how this usage affects their romantic human relationships. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory and the Investment Model of Commitment, and employing structural equation modeling, this thesis uses data from 2,431 emerging adults in romantic relationships to examine whether romantic AI companion usage influences relationship satisfaction and relationship stability among emerging adults in the United States (ages 18-30), and whether …

Integrating Traditional Samoan Music With School-Aged Children In Fostering Culturally Appropriate Behaviors Within The Framework Of Fa'afaletui And Multimodal Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Stormi Rachelle Winscot

Theses and Dissertations

Fa’aSamoa, the cultural framework shaping Samoan values, relationships, and daily life, deeply informs educational experiences in American Samoa. Music, as both cultural expression and communal practice, offers a powerful lens through which student engagement can be understood. This exploratory study employed multimodal interpretative phenomenological analysis (MMIPA), guided by the Fa’afaletui framework, to examine how Samoan and Pacific Islander students responded in embodied ways to traditional Samoan, culturally adapted Western, and other Western (folk, classical, pop) music in classroom settings. Drawing on focus group interviews and systematic observations, the study centered students’ movement, vocal expression, rhythmic participation, and peer interaction as …