Digital Commons Network^™

Swallow Your Medicine: Marisol’S Saca La Lengua From The Peace Portfolio Ii, A. E. Chapman

Theses and Dissertations

Bundling associations of medical examination, consumption, oral fixation, horror, and protest, Saca la Lengua provides a preview of a decisively abject turn in Marisol’s work. This thesis probes psychoanalytic themes of abjection and the pathological in the language and iconography presented in this and other works by Marisol.

Picturing Consumer Culture, Cultural Hybridity, And Womanhood: Farah Al Qasimi’S Photographs From 2012 To 2020, Minji Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Farah Al Qasimi’s 2012-2020 color photographs, arguing that this work presents a distinctive and salient critique of domesticity, material culture, and womanhood in the UAE. Through her lens as a woman and a culturally hybrid subject, Al Qasimi explores the tensions of modernization, globalization, consumerism, and gender.

Thinking Sculpturally: The Implications Of Sculptural Space In The Work Of Charles Ray, Ad Canter

Theses and Dissertations

Charles Ray states that “space, sculptural space…is the sculptor's primary medium.” This paper unpacks the term “sculptural space,” uncovers historical precedent for it, and suggests why it is fundamental to Ray’s project. The paper argues that, due to sculptural space, Ray’s artwork allows for many forms of meaningful engagement.

Luca (Last Universal Common Ancestor), Tansy Xiao

Theses and Dissertations

LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) is a non-linear virtual environment with a non-anthropocentric approach. Streaming real-time biometric data from performers' movements, brain activities, and bioprocess data from living microbiomes such as slime mold and yeast into the virtual ecosystem, LUCA explores the collective agency and interconnectivity among diverse living entities.

My Sauce! Living In The Polyrhythm, Zakiya Harris

Theses and Dissertations

This paper contextualizes “Ghana: The Place Where the Chief Sleeps,” for which Harris served as dance captain, rehearsal director, dancer, stager and choreographer. Harris details how her work living inside the polyrhythms of performance, practices, and pedagogies can produce a holistic West African dance education for students.

Oblique, Edward Kijowski

Theses and Dissertations

Oblique is a multi-sensory art installation that provides a story of fragmentation in sound and light rendered by an obtuse hexagon arrangement of speakers and associated lighting prompts. The oblique direction of the soundwaves creates sonic sculpturing that propels listeners into an active state.

Chemical Meadows, Nate Dorr

Theses and Dissertations

Chemical Meadows correlates water chemistry and photochemistry in New Jersey’s Meadowlands. A vast marshland transformed by industry and environmental contamination, the Meadowlands today are home to seven Superfund sites. By bathing 16mm film in contaminated waterways, sensitive photochemistry reveals hidden histories.

Feeble Transmitters, Indranil Choudhury

Theses and Dissertations

Feeble Transmitters is a series of electroacoustic sculptures made using ceramics, plexiglass, and home audio components like speakers, transducers, and amplifiers. The sculptures occupy a space between manufactured objects and organic forms. Drawing on the material culture of industrial design in audio, the series explores people’s relationships and rituals with consumer technology. When installed together in temporary installations, the sculptures activate their environment with a spatial soundscape.

The Routes, Wei-Ta Chen

Theses and Dissertations

The Routes is a 30-minute documentary that explores the filmmaker's reflection on the ties to family and homeland, as well as the nature of non-fiction filmmaking itself, all the while portraying in parallel the story of immigrant artist Hung-Ju as he delicately balances creative challenges with nostalgia.

Time's Radiant Keepers, Tara Aliya Kesavan

Theses and Dissertations

Time’s Radiant Keepers is a body of work comprising paintings, ceramic sculptures and video. Through these materials, my work emphasizes a tactile, embodied relationship between people and the virtual worlds they inhabit. I build on the idea of contending with the screen as a sculptural surface - one whose texture, form and objecthood we may look at, rather than simply look through. My formal inquiries are anchored in a rich narrative world. Drawing from state sponsored documentary films, feature films, and familial anecdotes from the 1950’s-1970’s in India, my paintings chronicle the emergence of the image of the urban, working …

Container Film, Dena Kopolovich

Theses and Dissertations

Container Film is an experimental nonfiction short film that explores the theme of carrying. Drawing inspiration from a blend of anthropological, religious, and artistic sources, the film is guided by an unknown narrator who contemplates the origins of humanity. Unlike conventional storytelling, the narrator’s uncertainty and inner dialogue punctuate the narrative, challenging a traditional linear structure. Jumping between diverse thoughts, she resists depicting human history with a singular hero or linear trajectory. Visually, the film unfolds through vivid tableaux vivants, dance sequences, and curious object arrangements, illustrating the subtle relationship between human cognition and materiality. Through its nuanced, tactile approach, …

Pricks And Pills, Anna A. Charles

Theses and Dissertations

"Pricks and Pills" is a collection of audio pieces designed for an online platform where individuals with diabetes can listen to and find emotional support from others who share their experiences. This audio project provides an intimate look into the lives of people navigating the challenges of diabetes. Through heartfelt interviews with individuals and their families, the podcast highlights their journeys, showcasing both their struggles and triumphs.

Blurring The Boundaries: The Filmmaking Approach Toward Remission, John M. Mastriano

Theses and Dissertations

Remission explores the filmmaker’s personal experience with grief and fatherhood as well as the importance of a shared connection with the natural world that transcends life and death. Though primarily a first-person, reflexive short documentary film, Remission draws from other documentary models and modes, blurring the boundaries of documentary filmmaking.

Reflections Of Little Red Dot: An Interactive Mixed Reality Archival Experience, Chloé Lee

Theses and Dissertations

It has been nearly a decade since I last visited Singapore, a place I am connected to yet an outsider. Reflections of Little Red Dot is a mixed-reality experience that animates my archive of drawings, videos, and 3D imagery from everyday Singaporeans in 2015, the year their country celebrated its 50th birthday.

Walking through this liminal mixed reality space, we hear how citizens are personally affected by the rapidly developing landscape and erasure of personal and historical sites of significance while reflecting on our collective agency to shape the future of our environments. We are invited into homes where loved …

Rgb Root Matriz Color Dance, Danielle E. Gauthier

Theses and Dissertations

RGB Root Matriz Color Dance (Color Dance) is an immersive, interactive experience that combines poetic phrases and color filters to create a womb-like environment. Designed by Danielle Gauthier, this artistic piece uses a webcam to respond to users’ movements in real time, allowing them to confront and express their emotions through metaphor and dance. Color Dance creates a unique platform for self-discovery and empowerment by fostering a connection between the body and discomforting emotions.

Erase The Record, Anne Sofie Noerskov

Theses and Dissertations

Erase the Record follows a young immigrant as she embarks on a magical journey to unearth her vanished memories and elusive cultural identity.
The film delves into the malleable nature of memory in an allegorical universe in which myth, dream, and magic coexist. Slowly unfolding themes of immigration and the imagination, the film sprung from a personal desire to approach immigration as a psychological experience. Erase the Record explores how the physical landscapes we inhabit affect us, and how memory, language, and time are stored in a body and in a landscape.

The Set Falls Apart, Thomas F. Tait

Theses and Dissertations

Using systems, puppets, and reappropriated technologies as central features of my practice, in my work I explore allegorical connections and cross-affiliations between otherwise separate ontological categories. In this text, I draw on sources such as affect theory, science fiction, theater, and the uncanny, to consider our affectual relationship to the nonhuman.

Dear Dad,, Kimin Kim

Theses and Dissertations

A father-to-son relationship is often described as cold, distant, and detached. Mine was no different. A son looking for his father's approval for his entire life, realizing the approval has to be given by himself, not from his father.

As Mundane As Possible, Minah Park

Theses and Dissertations

Minah Park’s work explores the themes of mundaneness and control, and focuses on the body as the vessel of emotions. In her videos and installations, Park questions the idea that our brains might have already been programmed.

Impact Of Social Integration On Student Persistence In Commuter Students, Julianna Paolini

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to quantitatively examine the ways in which social integration impacts student persistence in the commuter student population on the Glassboro campus at Rowan University. Additionally, this study examines the levels of social engagement in the commuter student population and in what ways is their engagement impacted. The sample consisted of 159 participants who commute to Rowan University’s main campus who are enrolled as undergraduate students. Participants were surveyed utilizing a Qualtrics survey that was distributed to students starting in December of 2023 and ending in February 2023. The survey consisted of questions about the …

間, Lele Dai

Theses and Dissertations

LeLe Dai makes contingent participatory public interventions using sensory materials such as sound, flickering light, and water. This paper examines their works through the lens of Chinese character Jian (間), meaning “gap/slit/incision,” to investigate the concept of “in-betweenness.”

Bengal Memory, Fahim Hamid

Theses and Dissertations

Bengal Memory is a documentary short film, told through an expository and personal lens, about a forgotten genocide that occurred in Bangladesh during its Liberation War, the controversial role that the U.S. government played in it, and how the lives of Bengali people in both the homeland and in the American diaspora were shaped by these events. As a Bangladeshi American and narrator of this story, I traveled to my native country to investigate. My father, Mohammed, had lived through the 1971 war and recounts his memories of the atrocities committed by West Pakistan, which claimed the lives of a …

Pipecolic Acid And Novel Insights Into Cerebral Malaria, Akua E. Mensah

Theses and Dissertations

Cerebral malaria (CM), a severe manifestation of Plasmodium infection, prompts our investigation into the nuanced role of pipecolic acid in its pathophysiology. To unravel the molecular intricacies, we conducted in vitro lysine labeling techniques of mice infected with P. berghei ANKA parasites, and human P. falciparum grown in vitro, aiming to discern the impact of Plasmodium on pipecolic acid production. Previous observations indicated an elevation in pipecolic acid levels correlating with neurological decline in children with CM. In our study, confirming elevated pipecolic acid presence in the plasma and brain tissues of CM patients and the animal model of CM, …

Investigating The Impact Of Human-Centered Interface Design On The User Experience Of Mobile Device Users, Ruchir Gupta

Theses and Dissertations

In order to investigate the intricate interaction between interface design, user technological proficiency, and other components of the user experience, this research study used a mixed-method approach. The beginner user group—those with little experience or expertise with technology - were the main target audience. The important discovery emphasizes the substantial influence that careful design can have on improving the effectiveness and usability of interfaces for non-tech-savvy individuals. When using the suggested Interface B instead of the current Interface A, beginner participants' task completion times significantly improved, according to the user study. This underlines the significance of creating with the needs …

Photo-Carbon Monoxide Releasing Molecules For Antibacterial Benefits In Vascular Grafts, Beste Caner

Theses and Dissertations

Globally, the annual hemodialysis procedures surpass 1.5 million, emphasizing the vital role of reliable vascular access methods. However, common challenges like access infections and clot-induced blood flow reduction necessitate innovative solutions. This study delved into the potential therapeutic role of carbon monoxide (CO) and its effects on both endothelialization and non-pathogenic bacteria causing infections. The primary focus was evaluating the impact of loading different concentrations of carbon monoxide-releasing molecules (CORMs), specifically CORM diketone 4 (DK4), within 2D spin-coated films on cultured E. coli and endothelial cells. Initial assessments of CO release kinetics from DK4-loaded films demonstrated that the 10% condition …

Effects Of Nitrogen Or Phosphorus Depletion On Lipid Production In Bracteacoccus Sp. And Tetrastrum Sp., Cassandra J. Po

Theses and Dissertations

As global energy demands have risen in the past decades, various species of microalgae have been chosen and used as sources of lipids for third-generation biofuel. I selected two species of green microalgae, Bracteacoccus sp. and Tetrastrum sp., from isolates from South Texas to determine their potential as sources of biofuel. For comparison, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii was used as a model organism. To evaluate lipid productivity under different nutrient regimens, the microalgae were grown in nutrient-replete growth media until the population had reached the end of the logarithmic phase (roughly 14 days), and then transferred into growth media depleted of nitrogen …

Role Of Interferon-Induced Protein With Tetratricopeptide Repeats 3 (Ifit3) In Hiv-1 Associated Neurodegenerative Disorder And Alzheimer’S Disease, Ranjit Kumar Das

Theses and Dissertations

The advent of cART has revolutionized the management of HIV-1 infection and saved the lives of millions of people worldwide. Yet, HAND continues to be clinically relevant with aging people with HIV-1 (PWH). The underlying mechanism of HAND remains poorly understood. In this regard. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 1(STAT1) and IFIT3 genes have been shown to induce neuroinflammation and neuronal cell death. However, the role of IFIT3 in HAND pathology has not been well established. Therefore, the present work investigated the significant role of IFIT3 gene in development of HAND. In the current study, …

Cultural Norms And The Expression Of Affection In Nigerian Yoruba Families, Tolulope G. Banjo

Theses and Dissertations

Affectionate behaviors have biological and physiological implications for humans. Affectionate communication encompasses behaviors that convey affection to the senders and receivers. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the role of culture and cultural traditions in the expression of affectionate behaviors among members of the Nigerian Yoruba family. Two focus groups were conducted in which participants (18-39 years of age) identified the affectionate behaviors they use in their families. Participants also shared how they perceived their culture playing a role in their affectionate communication. The findings revealed 18 categories of affectionate behaviors used by Nigerian Yoruba …

Corre Y Se Va: A Collection Of Ramblings, Daniella Arredondo

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores womanhood, death, and life writings. Through various pieces of nonfiction writings and poetic writings, this thesis reacts to each theme by making a personal connection to certain moments in the narrator’s life. From the Me-Too moment to a tonsil removal, the narrator situates the thesis as a reactive piece to works like “Borderlands/La Frontera” by Gloria Anzaldúa, nonfiction works, like Chanel Miller’s “Know My Name,” and various news articles around events that relate to each theme. The selections of the themes stem from Loteria, a popular bingo-like game within Hispanic culture. The use of these images creates …

In Absentia, Noreen M. Graf

Theses and Dissertations

In Absentia is a collection of short creative pieces that includes short stories, flash fiction, essay, and comics. The critical introduction aims to place my work into the ongoing dialog surrounding the accelerated portrayal of unlikable female protagonists in contemporary literary fiction.