Digital Commons Network^™

Redefining Home: Understanding Congolese Refugee Community Organization In The Greater Boston Area, Cameron Macpherson

Theses - ALL

For refugees that have been resettled into hostland nations, the creation of formal refugee community organizations (RCOs) dedicated to assisting immigrants represents a grassroots response to the stresses of migration. Despite their importance to the lives of refugees, RCOs have received little scholarly attention in the United States. Even less attention has been dedicated to studying the role of RCOs for African peoples. This research seeks to address these gaps in scholarship by analyzing community understandings of one RCO, the Congolese Development Center, among the Congolese refugee community located in the North Shore region of Massachusetts. Using qualitative ethnographic data, …

Struggles Of Korean Americans Labeled With Intellectual Disabilities To Claim Adult Status, Eun Young Jung

Dissertations - ALL

The transition to adulthood is complicated for youth with intellectual disabilities from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) Families. This ethnographic research explores the daily lives of six adults with intellectual disabilities who live in one urban Korean American community. In particular, the ethnographic observational, interview and textual data have been analyzed in terms of which activities associated with adulthood the participants could or could not engage in, in comparison to the practices of their non-disabled peers in this community. Besides the six focus participants with intellectual disabilities, I also interviewed six other youth and adults with disabilities, six parents of …

Control As Multiple Agree, Deniz Satik

Theses - ALL

This thesis presents a new theory of control in which the control predicate establishes control between PRO and the controller by Agreeing with both of them and checking their semantics at a later point of the derivation. Each DP possesses its own index as a syntactic feature. As the predicate Probes for these two Goals, it keeps track of the indexes of the controllee and controller with the control calculus, a part of the narrow syntax. The calculus is sensitive to the semantics of these nominal phrases after transfer to LF. This derives subject control in (1), which Culicover & …

Fierce: Black Queer Literacies Of Survival, Seth Davis

Dissertations - ALL

Influenced by Black feminist and queer scholars, my dissertation focuses on how Black and queer people have made interventions through language and performance to survive larger racist and homophobic forces. Despite critical scholarship on the literacies of both Black and queer communities, there has been limited research that brings together these two perspectives and bodies of research. The foundation of my study is based on audio/video interviews and participant observation: I interviewed participants from 2013 Washington, DC, Black Gay Pride and 2017 Harlem Pride, focusing specifically on their understanding of three terms: “reading,” “throwing shade,” and “pullin’ trade.”

The central …

The Role Of Approximate Negators In Modeling The Automatic Detection Of Negation In Tweets, Norma E. Palomino

Dissertations - ALL

Although improvements have been made in the performance of sentiment analysis tools, the automatic detection of negated text (which affects negative sentiment prediction) still presents challenges. More research is needed on new forms of negation beyond prototypical negation cues such as “not” or “never.” The present research reports findings on the role of a set of words called “approximate negators,” namely “barely,” “hardly,” “rarely,” “scarcely,” and “seldom,” which, in specific occasions (such as attached to a word from the non-affirmative adverb “any” family), can operationalize negation styles not yet explored. Using a corpus of 6,500 tweets, human annotation allowed for …

Satirical Index, Jack Honeysett

Theses - ALL

‘Satirical Index’ is a thesis of short stories describing formative memories that I think outline my experience of limbo, memory, death and nostalgia. Including a poem, which has been the culmination of my research, and represents a story that keeps restarting; never fully resolving. Continuously mutating. The body of the thesis demonstrates my history with the sensation of being out of place, or distant from my surroundings. It is my personal examination of the relationship between subject and object. In the pursuit of my thesis I discovered a method of contextualizing my visual art practice through memory, as explored in …

“When Our Crops Burn, We Burn”: Household Cultivation, Inattention And Exclusion In Tajikistan's Water Management Reform, Katherine Jeanette Macdonald

Theses - ALL

The Republic of Tajikistan possesses the largest amount of internally produced surface water in Central Asia; however, poor irrigation management has led to water shortages in agrarian communities. In support of government efforts to reform water management, international development actors have established Water Users’ Associations (WUAs) throughout the country. WUAs are non-governmental groups of irrigation water users responsible for local infrastructure maintenance, conflict resolution, and scheduling water distribution. These groups are expected to increase participation in irrigation management, the equity and efficiency of water supply to agricultural plots and by extension, crop yields and food security. Drawing on interviews with …

Microcelebrity Practices: A Cross-Platform Study Through A Richness Framework, Sikana Tanupabrungsun

Dissertations - ALL

Social media have introduced a contemporary shift from broadcast to participatory media, which has brought about major changes to the celebrity management model. It is now common for celebrities to bypass traditional mass media and take control over their promotional discourse through the practice of microcelebrity.

The theory of microcelebrity explains how people turn their public persona into media content with the goal of gaining and maintaining audiences who are regarded as an aggregated fan base. To accomplish this, the theory suggests that people employ a set of online self-presentation techniques that typically consist of three core practices: identity constructions, …

Negotiating Culture In Africa: A Critical Analysis Of Organizational Discourse In Ghana, Eric Karikari

Communication ETDs

Organizational culture is a concept that is theoretically contested, particularly within critical approaches to communication. However, it is a highly crucial area of research which has symbolic and material implications for individuals, organizations and communities. This study contributes to the conversation about how organizational culture is constituted by interrogating the forces at play in this constitution. One of such forces is neoliberalism, which operates by subsuming all organizational practices under the umbrella of market value. The study takes a cultural materialist approach to organizational culture through the analysis of discourse at the National Communications Authority (NCA) in Ghana.

The NCA …

A Review Of Silence In Modern Irish Literature, Lloyd (Meadhbh) Houston

International Yeats Studies

No abstract provided.

India In Yeats’S Early Imagination: Mohini Chatterjee And Kālidāsa, Ashim Dutta

International Yeats Studies

W. B. Yeats’s interest in India persisted throughout his variegated life and career, starting in the late nineteenth century and lasting through the final decade of his life. This article concentrates on his early years when he first came to terms with Indian philosophy, religion, and literature via the Vedāntist-Theosophist Mohini Chatterjee and the work of the fifth-century Sanskrit playwright Kālidāsa. With a view to examining critically Yeats’s creative engagement with, and appropriation of, these disparate materials, this article closely reads a discarded 1880s poem on Chatterjee’s teaching and its later 1929 version, “Mohini Chatterjee,” as well as his early …

Fostering A Sense Of Belonging: The Asian American Student Experience, Linh Phuong Nguyen

M.A. in Higher Education Leadership: Action Research Projects

The purpose of my research is twofold: to examine the ways that Asian American graduate students within the School of Leadership and Education Sciences (SOLES) experience a sense of social belonging at the University of San Diego (USD) and to create a means through which their sense of social belonging may be enhanced. There were two cycles, consisting a total of three focus groups, which worked through the four phases of appreciative inquiry. Cultural themes, such as difficulty approaching authority figures, preference for ethnic subgroup identification, and experiences of marginalization by those from within the Asian American community, other people …

Automated Development Of Semantic Data Models Using Scientific Publications, Martha O. Perez-Arriaga

Computer Science ETDs

The traditional methods for analyzing information in digital documents have evolved with the ever-increasing volume of data. Some challenges in analyzing scientific publications include the lack of a unified vocabulary and a defined context, different standards and formats in presenting information, various types of data, and diverse areas of knowledge. These challenges hinder detecting, understanding, comparing, sharing, and querying information rapidly.

I design a dynamic conceptual data model with common elements in publications from any domain, such as context, metadata, and tables. To enhance the models, I use related definitions contained in ontologies and the Internet. Therefore, this dissertation generates …

University Of Montana Commencement Program, 2018, University Of Montana--Missoula. Office Of The Registrar

University of Montana Commencement Programs, 1898-2020

Commencement program from the University of Montana.

A Biographical Study Of A Female Karen Refugee Who Experienced Academic Success In A Texas High School, Katherine P. Whitbeck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative biographical study explored the life experiences of a female Karen youth who moved to the United States as a pre-teenager, entering a medium-sized Texas rural public high school as a freshman. Perceptions of English Learners are that they are ill-prepared for achieving success in rigorous academic subjects taught in United States public schools. Refugees are considered to have more difficulties because of the trauma associated with their pre-immigration violent environments, which often involve little or no organized education in the native country or in refugee camps. The biographical design allowed the Karen student who achieved academic success at …

Explaining The Obvious: Privileged Hermeneutics And The Irony Of Explicitly Literal Interpretation, Joshua Alkire

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine why so many uses of the word literal (whether taken from everyday contemporary speech or the works of well-respected ancient writers) seem at odds with the word’s theoretical definition and to explore the implications of this disparity for those who privilege a literal interpretation of Scripture. The examples will show that the meaning of literal was not altered at a particular point in time, nor is it altered on an ongoing basis by a small subset of particularly idiosyncratic individuals. Rather, the word is predisposed to behave strangely the moment it is …

Overcoming Barriers: Factors Of Resiliency In Refugee Students Pursuing Higher Education, Tamika Braye

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research looks at the significant barriers that exist in the United States that hinder African refugee youth from being able to pursue their educational goals. According to the literature, language, social, and economic barriers during this pivotal point in their lives are often reasons that refugee students may have a difficult time going to college. Refugee families enter the United States in hopes of a prosperous life. The following research will discuss ways that current or former refugees have overcome these barriers through forms of intervention and acts of resiliency to reach their educational goals. The findings of this …

Blackdom: Interpreting The Hidden History Of New Mexico's Black Town, Austin J. Miller

History ETDs

This master’s thesis recovers the history of Blackdom, New Mexico. Founded by an African American family from Georgia, Blackdom is a ghost town that existed in the early decades of the twentieth century near Roswell, New Mexico. Blackdom was initially imagined as both a refuge from the hostilities of Jim Crow society and as a for-profit enterprise. Entanglement in land-fraud scandals hindered the town’s early development, but Blackdom eventually grew to nearly three hundred residents, with its own school, Baptist church, post office, and general store. Blackdom settlers practiced a variety of agricultural methods, including dry farming and irrigation from …

Adapting The Formality Level Of The Language In User Interface Localization, Steffen Meschkat

Defensive Publications Series

Different languages utilize different levels of formality when the language is used to address another person. When software applications are customized to a specific country or region, e.g., by localizing the user interfaces to use the language(s) of that country or region, static translation can result in use of formal linguistic features different from that expected by the users. This disclosure describes incorporation of local languages in the application user interfaces with contextually appropriate levels of formality.

Boyd Briefs - May 11, 2018, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School Of Law

Boyd Briefs / Road Scholars

Boyd Briefs provides weekly information regarding the activities and accomplishments of the faculty, students, and alumni of the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Boys, Balls, And The Blues: The Erasure Of Genderqueer Bodies, Austin Mcgrath

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

The goal of this essay is to re-explore the concept of gender in its relation to genderqueer and nonbinary identities. Before its examination of the gender reveal party, this essay examines male and female, masculine and feminine, and man and woman, carefully critiquing and distinguishing biological sex from gender expression and gender identity using a Queer theoretical framework to contextualize these distinctions in relation to queer identities. Through a modern contextualization, linguistic analysis, and a critical media examination of gender reveal images and footage, this essay acknowledges and analyzes the heteronormative structures that reinforce gender binaries. It challenges the deployment …

Un Solo Pie Adentro: Sense Of Community Of Puerto Ricans In Miami, Andrea C. Ruiz-Sorrentini

Open Access Theses

Transnational migrants’ identities are configured in relationship to more than one nation and are continuously pulled in different directions as old and new members of multiple communities wrapped in a single experience (Aranda, Hughes, & Sabogal, 2014). Particularly for Puerto Ricans in the United States (U.S.), symbolic and cultural bonds are linked to their communities on the Island which require us to expand traditional notions of sense of community as a process and as an enactment of connections between people and transnational social spaces. Therefore, this study explores the ways Puerto Ricans living in Miami, Florida define the concept of …

Theories Of Anzaldua And Fanon: The Battle Of Algiers To Black Lives Matter, Maren Carey

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Cultural theorists have analyzed and exposed many elements of culture that were otherwise out of plain sight. Two theorists, Gloria E. Anzaldua and Franz Fanon, that have done exceptional work attempting to shatter the norms of how concepts such as decolonization, violence and activism could truly work to create progress. Fanon discusses concepts of black existentialism in the early 20th century. He explores how difficult it is, primarily for people of color, to express and develop an identity within the structures of inequality embedded globally through colonization. Anzaldua, on the other hand, does similar work but through micro-cultural changes that …

Peer Support And Food Security In Deaf College Students, Brianna Celeste Keogh

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

Objective: This paper investigates the role of peer support in food security among deaf college students. Participants: The sample included 166 college students who took the survey between May and October 2017. Methods: Participants completed a bilingual online survey in ASL and English. This survey included questions about peer support, the USDA’s 6-item food security module, and sociodemographic characteristics. Results: Out of 166 students (mean age=23; SD=6), 60.7% were food secure. About 26.4% (n= 43) were at-risk for food insecurity and another 12.9% (n=21) had very low food security. The sample included respondents who identified as people of color (54%) …

Intersectional Experiences: White And Black Deaf Lesbians In Metro Dc 1980 - 2000, Paige E. Watson

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

This study looks at the experiences of two groups with intersecting identities: white and Black Deaf lesbians who lived in Washington, DC from the 1980s to the early 2000s, a transformative period for lesbians. During the 1980s, the larger LGBT community united as one to push for recognition. The 1990s brought the lesbian feminist movement, and with it attention towards classism and sexism within the LGBT movement. During this period, the focus of the lesbian community shifted from a white and middle-class movement to a more inclusive one. However, even with this attention and the eventual fracturing of the LGBT …

The Word: Jacques Ellul's Dialogic Response To La Technique, Jeffrey S. Bogaczyk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this interpretive work is primarily to bring two Ellulian metaphors into conversation with one another: la technique, and “the word.” Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), a prominent French philosopher, sociologist, and theologian, is predominantly known for his critique of what he calls la technique, an underlying system which acts as an all-encompassing feature of necessity, which privileges the values of efficiency, speed, and progress in all societal endeavors, and which serves as the predominant interpretive lens by which we can examine and understand our current historical and cultural moment. Technique had its origination in the value system of …

The Title, Laurent Turgeon-Dharmoo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present dissertation seeks to address and redress clinical psychology’s disciplinary silence around the title of ‘Doctor’ and attempts to uncover possible meanings gathering around it by following several angles of disclosure: The self-disclosure angle recounts my own resistances and attempts at coming to terms with the title; The disciplinary disclosure angle critically reviews the scarce literature on the topic using discourse analysis; The empirical disclosure angle provides quantitative and qualitative analyses of data obtained from 27 Directors of Clinical Training and Training Clinic Directors, who were prompted to report how they use the title with various interlocutors, to outline …

American Myth And Ideologies Of Straight White Masculinity In Men's Literary Self-Representations, Mary Parish

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines three autobiographical texts written in post-World War II America (1959-1973) that take as their subject a straight white man’s reflection on and engagement with the exercise of male power and the forces, both internal and external, that shape the degree to which he is “self-made,” i.e., an autonomous agent able to exert his will within a life domain (domestic, public, and war). Each of these writers engages in surveillance not solely of their own power, but also of the men who influence their experience, using their observations to critique, assert, and question the gendered realities and expectations …

Semantic Realism And Historicity: Brandom, Habermas And Hegel, Norman Schultz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thesis of this dissertation is that Habermas’ universal pragmatic and the recent neo-pragmatist semantic realism of Brandom, aimed at bridging the divide, are both based on misinterpretations of Hegel. Both approaches misunderstand the central Hegelian idea of historicity, and thus fail to establish a correct connection to Hegel. The aim of the dissertation is to point to and sketch Hegel’s idea of historicity. As part of the discussion, I will defend the controversial thesis that Hegel did not have a system, but rather a historical account of how we develop knowledge under the historical conditions of society. Hegel, unlike …

The Core Relation Between Hospitality (Philoxenia), Dignity And Vulnerability In Orthodox Christian Bioethics: A Contribution To Global Bioethics, Rabee Toumi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In a pluralistic world, reaching consensus in matters of bioethics has proved to be difficult, especially with the political polarization that nurtures inimical differences. This dissertation argues that a middle ground can be identified between the plurality of value systems in contemporary bioethics based on an anthropological approach. This middle ground that reflects commonalities of the human condition can be explored in relation to the foundational principles of Orthodox Christian anthropology. To identify this middle ground the analysis discusses the core relation between hospitality, dignity, and vulnerability as a contribution to global bioethics.

In general, based on Orthodox Christian theology …