Digital Commons Network^™

The Geometry Of Social Networks, Daniel Mackisack

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is primarily about the impact of the Egyptian revolution on the social realities of those who experienced it. How it changed their lives and how it reshaped society. It looks at the relationship between the geometry of the social in Cairo and the experience of political events and regime changes in Egypt between 2010 and 2016, drawing from the individual assemblages and narratives of participants and their associations with diverse people and places. It covers a period beginning prior to the revolution on January 25th 2011 and concludes in the more recent post-revolutionary period. Individual participants were surveyed …

Assessing The Resilience Of Adolescents Who Were Raised In Orphanages In Cairo, Egypt, Noha Emam Hassanin

Theses and Dissertations

Orphans in Egypt face discrimination at school, in the work place and when finding a marriage partner. They also are at risk for developing physical, emotional and intellectual delays as a result of residing in an orphanage. The small amount of research conducted on orphans in Egypt has focused on these deficits and the hardships. However, it may be more empowering and more effective to focus on the strengths and capabilities of these youth. In particular, during adolescence when Egyptian orphans must leave their institutions, it is especially important to understand how to support resilience and give them the tools …

Ucc Minutes, February 2019, University Curriculum Council

UCC Agendas/Minutes

No abstract provided.

Applying An Ethics Of Care To Internet Research: Gamergate And Digital Humanities, Todd Suomela, Florence Chee, Bettina Berendt, Geoffrey Rockwell

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article examines key ethical issues that are continuing to emerge from the task of archiving data scraped from online sources such as social media sites, blogs, and forums, particularly pertaining to online harassment and hostile groups. Given the proliferation of digital social data, an understanding of ethics and data stewardship that evolves alongside the shifting landscape of digital societies is indeed essential.

Our study involves a primary research archive that is comprised of data scraped from our project concerning the case study of Gamergate, which involved numerous instances of hate speech in various online communities. Doing this type of …

Empowering Christian Widows For Social Change In Northern Nigeria, Sung Bauta

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

"Disgusted With Myself": Examining The Risk Factors And Vulnerabilities Of Hostesses At Karaoke Tv Venues In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Glenn M. Miles, Daphne Alsiyao

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This exploratory study is one of a series of research projects interviewing survivors of sexual exploitation in southeast Asia. It assesses the risk factors and vulnerabilities of young women in Karaoke TV (KTV) venues in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This research study assesses the risk factors and vulnerabilities of young women in these venues. A questionnaire-based survey was administered to 50 participants to gain a holistic view of the lives of young women working in Karaoke TV (KTV) venues. The survey consisted of a series of questions pertaining to demographics, family background, prejudice and discrimination, sexual risk factors, substance abuse, sexual …

The Latin-American Flavor Of Enforced Disappearances, Ariel E. Dulitzky

Chicago Journal of International Law

Enforced disappearances occur when persons are deprived of their liberty by state officials, organized groups, or private individuals acting on behalf of, or with the support, direct or indirect, consent, or acquiescence of the government. The deprivation of liberty is followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty. Consequently, such persons are placed outside the protection of the law. As such, the crime and the human rights violation of enforced disappearance comprise many different types of state repression. Given this multiplicity of scenarios in …

Between Reparations And Repair: Assessing The Work Of The Icc Trust Fund For Victims Under Its Assistance Mandate, Anne Dutton, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Chicago Journal of International Law

The practice of international justice has made a significant shift from narrowly focused criminal accountability to a broader and more holistic understanding encompassing the totality of victims’ justice needs. In particular, international criminal justice is concerned with victims of mass atrocity crimes, whose needs are profound and whose capacities are limited by the experiences of gross and systematic violence. These needs include individual and communal capacity building to engage in criminal processes as well as remedy and repair in the aftermath of criminal procedures. The Trust Fund for Victims represents, in many ways, the epicenter of this shift in international …

Perspectives Of Student Dis/Engagement In Youth Attending An Alternative School As Viewed Through A Lens Of Respect And Relationships, Daniel Vallee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study enlists the voices of youth attending an Alternative School in a small town in Western Canada to further theorize what it means to be dis/engaged with/from school. Findings suggest that school relationships with both staff and peers are key to understanding student dis/engagement, and that relationships are understood in terms of their degree of respect or un/fairness.

The Music In His Words: The Art Of Sound And Folk In Louis Armstrong’S Manuscript For Satchmo: My Life In New Orleans, “The Armstrong Story”, Adriana C. Filstrup

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis dives into the musical journey embedded in the autobiographical writings of America’s jazz ambassador, Louis Armstrong. It examines Armstrong’s typewritten manuscript, The Armstrong Story, which was eventually revised by an editor and published as his second autobiography with the title of Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans in 1954 (originally published in France in 1952.) Armstrong’s manuscript reads like sheet music, where any sound could affect the harmony of the story. He created a voice that had met every art form before it became the manuscript of his autobiography, but along with that voice, references from Black …

Reverse The Curse: Colonialist Legacies Of The Magic Poem, Karen E. Lepri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the conceptual relationships between poetry, magic, and race and their effects on both intellectual and creative practices from modernism through the post-war era. In doing so, this study works cross-disciplinarily, tracing early anthropological and sociological characterizations of primitive religion in connection to early-to-mid-twentieth-century literary study and writing. In working across disciplines at this particularly fungible moment in the history of the academy, this dissertation attempts to understand how the concurrent colonial global context effects the production and organization of knowledge just prior to and during modernism. It ultimately seeks to de-colonize literary thinking about poetry by performing …

Rituals Of Remaindered Life In The Films Of Kidlat Tahimik, Alison R. Boldero

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Kidlat Tahimik, who achieved international renown during the Marcos regime for his film Perfumed Nightmare (Mababangong Bangungot, 1976), is relatively unknown outside of international film circles. Considered a pioneer of Third Cinema in the Philippines, a radical film movement from Latin America that has since inspired similar movements globally, Tahimik challenged cultural hegemony in a postcolonial, post-World War II Philippines through the production of imperfect films. This paper looks to three of Tahimik's films - Perfumed Nightmare, Turumba (1983), and Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow? (Bakit Dilaw Ang Kulay ng Bahaghari, 1994) …

Refugees From Somalia, Burma/Myanmar And Iraq: Navigating New Lives In The Us In Post-9/11 Context, Ivona Boroje

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis engages with the relationship of the US with refugees, with a focus on the reception and perception of refugees resettled in the US after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Three groups that have resettled in the US in large numbers after 9/11, namely refugees from Somalia, Burma/Myanmar and Iraq groups have had divergent experiences, shaped by factors such as race and/or ethnic identity, religion, cultural norms, expectations about life in the US, histories of their places of origin and the relationship of the US with that place of origin. This thesis attempts to compare the experiences …

Identity Shifts Among Cis- And Trans- Females Who Sell Sex On The Streets Of New York City, Amalia S. Paladino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Deviant Identity Shift (DIS) Model that is introduced in this dissertation provides a framework for making sense of how sex workers come to understand their own place in the world, including the experiences of violence that often accompany their lives, and it shifts our attention away from static models that focus on unidimensional or even multidimensional factors that impact the lives of sex workers, to a far more dynamic view of the evolution of their distinctive forms of cultural identity. A series of themes emerge from the life histories of 18 cis- and 15- trans women between the ages …

A Parade Of Identities: Negotiation Of Ethnic Identities In Three New York City Cultural Parades, Julia M. Herrera-Moreno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Parade of Identities” is a digital project that applies social theories of international migration, psychology and cultural anthropology to ethnographic visual data in order to analyze ethnic identity and urban space appropriation found in three of New York City’s cultural parades. The project traces and analyzes the historical meaning and emerging directions in terms of ethnic identity construction, of NYC immigrant parades through the use of the author’s photography and video collections (2012-2018) of St. Patrick’s Day, Columbus Day and Chinese New Year parades, in association with a website and blog via digital humanities’ platform. Additionally, by activating the …

Constructing Social Identity Through The Past: The Itza Maya Community Identity Through The Late Postclassic Period (1250–1525ce), Yuko Shiratori

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the construction of social identity of the Itza Maya during the Late Postclassic period (1400-1525 CE) at Tayasal in the Petén lakes region, Guatemala. The Itza were the last indigenous group conquered by the Spaniards in the Americas in 1697. Various ethnohistorical documents describe the people and socio-political organization of the Itza during sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Avendaño y Loyola 1987; Edmonson 1982, 1986; Jones 1998; López de Cogolludo 1971; Roys 1967; Villagutierre Soto-Mayo 1983). According to the documents, the Itza of the Petén claimed to have migrated from the great city of Chich'en Itza in …

Isom Fellowship Proposal: Queer Life Histories In Mississippi, Amy Mcdowell, Jessica Wilkerson

Queer Mississippi (Complete Collection)

Research proposal submitted by Dr. Amy McDowell and Dr. Jessica Wilkerson for the Isom Fellows program, a two-year fellowship with the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies funded by the Office of Provost. Isom Fellows are asked to contribute to the Isom Center through research, teaching, and service. Five fellows are selected per cohort.

The Revival Of The Muscogee Creek Language Through The Development Of An Indigenous Language Interest Group, Tomasina Chupco Gilliam

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

This dissertation discusses the revival of the Muscogee Creek Language through the Development of an Indigenous Language Interest Group. This dissertation examined the various factors contributing to the decline of the Muskogee Creek Language. In addition, this dissertation also addressed the factors that have not been previously discussed, regarding this matter. The dissertation had a positive view of the language and the problems of the slow extinction associated with it. The dissertation also addressed the effect of the language on the people. The research focused on the people who use the language, which included young adults and elders of the …

Rooftop Recipes For Relating: Ecologies Of Humans, Animals, And Life, Noha Fikry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the particularly lively rooftops of Cairo through which interspecies intimacies unfold. On these rooftops, various animals (such as chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, goats, and rabbits) are raised to be later eaten and consumed for sustenance. Throughout the various thesis chapters, I try and expose the various patterned modalities, terms, and codes bringing these different species together in their sustained long-term relationships. I follow these interspecies relations as they narrate wonders of life-and-death, collaborations, various instantiations of home, social gift exchanges, marital rituals, and grieving patterns. These relations involve different tasks, requiring a very specific and complex gendered …

Through The Keyhole: Ethnographic Analysis Of Cyber Violence In Egypt, Radwa Fouda

Theses and Dissertations

Internet has long existed in Egypt, however sudden scholarly interest came after the 2011 revolution. The global scholarly body tended to couple internet accessibility to the so-called Arab-spring, without studying the other forms and politics of internet as an evolution, and almost none have delved in the dungeons of Cyber violence in the MENA Region, needless to say in Egypt. It focuses mainly on individual-to-individual perpetration of violence, how, when and why people variably define unsolicited intervention with their data as "violence", and how, when and why, they choose other notions to define such incident(s). By doing so, it opens …

Nonviolent Jihad: An Immanent Critique, John Roedel

Theses and Dissertations

In pursuit of radical democracy, against the juggernaut of modern liberalism, this thesis attempts an unusual resuscitation of an Islamic nonviolence by engaging in bridge-building and mutual translation between the principled nonviolence of Mahatma Gandhi and the so-called "political Islam" of Sayyid Qutb. By means of the method of immanent critique, this thesis employs the "anthropological skepticism" of Talal Asad to critique the secularist notions of agency employed by these seminal and polarizing figures, revealing the centrality of "lack" to both ideologies. It otherwise self-consciously adopts the essentialisms used by and against these ideologies to attempt to lay the groundwork …

Democratization Of Nepal: Towards Consolidation? Perspectives On Rule Of Law & Civil Liberties, Anil J. Shahi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After popular uprisings that started in 1989, Nepal declassed the 200-year old absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy in 1990 and entered into an era of parliamentary democracy. The road to democratization was to be proven tumultuous when the Maoists launched an insurgency in 1996. In 2003, citing democratic government’s inability to end the bloody insurgency and political parties’ utter ineptitude in governance, King Gyanendra dismissed the parliament and retook the reign in an attempt to re-establish absolute monarchy. Just three years after, the Maoists and an alliance of seven political parties reached an agreement to end the insurgency, abolish …

Finding The Public: Models Of Interaction Between Curatorial And Education Departments In Three American Encyclopedic Museums, Liam Sweeney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Curatorial and education departments have coexisted for the last half century in American art museums, and have often had differing attitudes about who the museum is for and how best to convey the current and historical meaning of the works they display. This results from trends and transformations in the field, which have recently yielded an increased attention on broadening the definition of the public that the museum serves. This thesis examines interactions between curatorial and education departments in three encyclopedic art museums across the United States, in order to better understand how meaningful collaboration can be fostered between these …

Refracting Immigration Rhetoric: The Struggle To Define Identity, Place And Nation In Southern Arizona, Emily Duwel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the refraction of immigration rhetoric in a local context through a collection of letters to the editor of southern Arizona’s largest and only daily newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, for the period 2006-2010. The purpose is to further insight into the process by which xenophobic nationalism is both contested and legitimated ‘on the ground,’ within a violent paradigm of nativist rhetoric and exclusion. Findings reveal essential disjunctures between and within letter-writers’ conceptions of moral proximity and the social contract—as delimiting those obligations and expectations that inhere between society, the self and the stranger—as well as competing notions …

Development, Expertise, And Infrastructure Between The Ohio River And Cincinnati Riverfront, 1895-Present, Raymond W. Pettit

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As the first major U.S. urban center located west of the Appalachian Mountains, Cincinnati’s early growth depended on the Ohio River, a vital route for the westward drive of U.S. settler colonialism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Over time, with the expansion of railroads and shifting trade routes, the river became less relevant to the success of the city. In this dissertation study, I pick up the history of Cincinnati’s relationship with the Ohio River after it had apparently declined in importance. Through a focus on how Cincinnati elites have advocated for different infrastructural projects along the …

The Morphology And Evolution Of The Primate Brachial Plexus, Brian M. Shearer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Primate evolutionary history is inexorably linked to the evolution of a broad array of locomotor adaptations that have facilitated the clade’s invasion of new niches. Researchers studying the evolution of primates and of their individual locomotor adaptations have traditionally relied on bony morphology – a practical choice given the virtual non-existence of any other type of tissue in the fossil record. However, this focus downplays the potential importance of the many other structures involved in locomotion, such as muscle, cartilage, and neural tissue, which may each be influenced by separate selective forces because of their different roles in facilitating movement. …

Landing Points, Matt Boyle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This fiction is a phenomenological account of generational memory and change. Special attention is paid to biological New York City and Long Island.

[LANDING POINTS concerns the creative conscience of a middle-aged notary supplies salesman. He looks in on himself through the layered experiences offered by his position in time and space. Set roughly in the future on the South Shore of Long Island, beaches as well as more central locations, Queens, and Berlin, his odyssey takes the reader through a series of memories endlessly infused with desire to establish limits on the writing of the self.]

Repertoires Of Contention Between The Regime And Political Actors, Ereny Zarif

Theses and Dissertations

While most of the literature in post-revolutionary Egypt focused on the international spread of repertoires of contention, protesting, organizing and mobilizing techniques, this thesis aims at drawing links between political action before and after the 2011 uprising through studying 1) the influence of regime's tactics on revolutionary's techniques and 2) political actors’ reactions to the existing structures. Building a bridge between both aisles, regime and actors, and studying them as part of the same construction is crucial. Protesters did not only get affected by international repertoires of contention or local ones, but they were also influenced by the authoritarian regime's …

Pragmatic Functions Of Political Humor Used By Egyptian Facebook Users, Shereen Elshindy

Theses and Dissertations

Political humor has always been a powerful tool to convey messages of resistance, criticism, sarcasm, etc. The growth of digital tools and social networking sites has provided a new platform for the creation and sharing of political humor. This study explores the functions of political humor employed by Egyptian users of Facebook (FB) in reaction to a number of political events and difficult circumstances through investigating the pragmatic functions of a number of humorous posts published on two satirical public FB pages /portō ṭora min ʔajlika ʔant/ and /sōbar faʃxa/. Fifty-nine posts have been selected for analysis. The selected posts …

Dawsha W Al-Qāhirah: Listening To Power And Possibilities In Cairo’S Everyday, Noor Salama

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the notion of 'dawsha' (an Arabic word, indicating noise or sound out of place) as an order-word that stratifies social worlds in Cairo and marks and crystallises differences within aural taxonomies along various axes of difference and marginalisation. It also investigates dawsha as a space and a site for resistance, and for the making and unmaking of relationships in contemporary Cairo.