Digital Commons Network^™

Cities, Fair Housing, And Gentrification: A Proposal In Progressive Federalism, David D. Troutt

Cardozo Law Review

This Essay divides in two Parts. In Part I, I will situate the three fair housing interests in the familiar AFFH planning environment, offering arguments to shape context. The harder task is implementation. What constitutes the specific laws and policies that indicate a city's commitment to fair housing? In Part II, I will draw upon some of the work that the center I direct at Rutgers Law School (the Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity) has done in Newark, New Jersey, a working-class city experiencing an affordable housing crisis amid increasing economic development activity in the middle of one …

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 …

Obfuscating Authorship: Results Of A User Study On Nondescript, A Digital Privacy Tool, Robin Camille Davis

Publications and Research

For those who write anonymously, particularly for safety reasons, authorship attribution poses a threat. Nondescript, my web app, guides writers in achieving stylometric obfuscation in order to preserve anonymity. The app runs simulations of authorship attribution scenarios by analyzing the user’s linguistic features. In this paper, I will describe the conception of the Nondescript app; discuss related work; and present the results of a user study. Most users in the study were able to anonymize their writing in at least 5 out of 10 authorship attribution scenarios. Users rated the anonymization process an average of 3.6 out of 5 in …

Full Issue Spring 2019

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Reading And Creating Comics In The Fully Online Afl Classroom: Students' Perceptions, Mona Azam

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to examine the perceptions of multi-level Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) online learners of reading and creating digital comics in their online classroom. Data were collected from 23 multi-level online AFL students who participated in a 6 weeks fully online comic-based course where they read a comic each week with the teacher and create a digital comic using a web-based comic creation tool related to the topic they have read in class. Participants were asked to respond to a questionnaire and participate in group interviews at the end of the experiment. Results show …

Culture In The Afl Novice Classroom: Teachers' Perceptions, Teaching Techniques, And Assessment., Amera Abdalrahim

Theses and Dissertations

The teaching of cultural content in the foreign language classroom has received a great deal of attention throughout the past few decades. The role of culture in the L2 classroom has been investigated and studied from different perspectives. This study investigates teachers' perceptions of teaching culture in the Arabic as a foreign language novice classroom, in addition to how Arabic as foreign language teachers introduce and assess culture. The aim of this study is to explore the current teaching practices regarding cultural content in the novice classroom, in order to determine what is needed for better teaching practices that can …

Inclusion Strategies In President El Sissi's Discourse In Context Of Election Campaigns, Ihab Abdelhafiz

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is to investigate how President Abdelfattah El Sissi used pronouns as well as different alternatives of the word “Egypt” as a discourse strategy to add the sense of inclusion in the context of election campaigns. Group orientation (i.e. inclusion) is of the strategies commonly used in political speeches (Hicks, 2005). Several theories relating to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) have been introduced to help understand political speeches beyond the surface level. For the purpose of this study, which includes the text, discourse practices and socio-political context, has been employed. The sample used for this study was …

The Impact Of Liberal Arts Education On Egyptian Student Identity And Worldview: A Study Of The Core Curriculum Of The American University In Cairo, Rami Wasfi Maurice Guindi

Theses and Dissertations

Liberal Arts Education advocates an enquiry about life at its very fundamental level. In contrast to other forms of higher education, it decidedly delves into the complicated task of engaging with student ontological, epistemological, and axiological foundations. Its mandate - and its promise - is to educate the formation of student identities and worldviews. For Egypt and the Middle East, where the study of humanities is in deep crisis, Liberal Arts Education programs present valuable initiatives to challenge the stagnant status quo and offer to students zones of freedom of thought and expression. It thus becomes imperative to ask: to …

Maʕleš Maʕleš: A Corpus-Based Study On The Discourse Marker Maʕleš, Mukhtar Sayed Abd El Hafiz

Theses and Dissertations

This monograph is an attempt to capture the pragmatic functions and the syntactic behavior of the discourse marker maʕleš in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. It also aims to highlight any potential correlations between the syntactic behavior of maʕleš and its pragmatic functions. Additionally, the collocational behavior of maʕleš within its different pragmatic functions is investigated. The data of this study is a purposeful sample drawn from a corpus of an Egyptian series. Utilizing a corpus-based, qualitative method, the data is analyzed by using WordSmith Tools, a functional corpus software that has the capacity for the search for a word or a …

Ya' Between Vocative And Non-Vocative Use In Egyptian Film Language A Corpus Analysis: Pragmatic Functions And Formal Features, David Henen

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the functional and formal features of constructions built with the particle ya in the Egyptian Arabic film language of the film eš-šabaḥ (The Ghost) (2007). Studying ya is of interest as it is the most frequent lexical item after the conjunction we (and) in the data. By means of using WordSmith Tools Lexical Analysis Software, a concordance of instances of ya in the data was built. In line with the Speech Act theory by Austin (1975), a quantitative design was employed which enabled the findings to be classified according to their functional and formal properties. Regarding formal …

The Usage Of Songs In Arabic As A Foreign Language Classes: Teachers' Perceptions And Practices, Yahia Moshtahari

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates Arabic as a Foreign Language (AFL) teachers' perceptions towards the usefulness of songs in fostering language acquisition in AFL classes, in addition to the practices they employ, and the alignment between teacher perceptions and practices. Perceptions and practices are examined further through a focus on the purposes for using songs in class, the activities teachers use with songs, and the challenges they face with using songs in class. In addition, the study evaluates whether there are any demographic features that distinguish teachers who use songs from those who do not. The aforementioned topics were investigated through an …

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 …

Hundred Years Since Yugoslavia’S Birth: Lesson On Nationalism, Balkanization, And Religion In Europe’S Periphery, Vjekoslav Perica

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

In 2018, historians were marking the one hundredth anniversary of the foundation of a nation-state in southeastern Europe remembered as Yugoslavia–the country of Southern Slavs. The multi-ethnic nation used to connect several European ethnic groups of the shared Slavonic ancestry yet were divided by three major religions and mutually exclusive ethnic nationalist ideologies. The Yugoslav national project lasted seven decades under various regime types in a sensitive balance often disturbed by wars. In the 20th century alone, the territory of the former Yugoslavia saw six major wars, three cycles of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and about fifteen various states and …

The Theological Effort Of Hafiz Ali Of Korcha, Ismail Bardhi

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Hafiz Ali Korcha's work and activities in the fields of theology, literature, and education can be viewed, from the historical-theological perspective, as a reflection of his theological effort. This is the central category, containing as it does all of Korcha's cognitive-theoretical, axiological, and cultural-theological speculations, as well as his views on science, literature, cultural policy, and religion. In his entire theological opus, one feels the fragrance of the Qur'an and of the life of Prophet Muhammad a.s. Theological effort, as understood by Korcha, differs from theology in that it is the source of theologizing and is a primordial tendency of …

Culture Clubs: Processing Speech By Deriving And Exploiting Linguistic Subcultures, David Guy Brizan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Spoken language understanding systems are error-prone for several reasons, including individual speech variability. This is manifested in many ways, among which are differences in pronunciation, lexical inventory, grammar and disfluencies. There is, however, a lot of evidence pointing to stable language usage within subgroups of a language population. We call these subgroups linguistic subcultures.

The two broad problems are defined and a survey of the work in this space is performed. The two broad problems are: linguistic subculture detection, commonly performed via Language Identification, Accent Identification or Dialect Identification approaches; and speech and language processing tasks taken which may see …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

A Defense Of Pure Connectionism, Alex B. Kiefer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Connectionism is an approach to neural-networks-based cognitive modeling that encompasses the recent deep learning movement in artificial intelligence. It came of age in the 1980s, with its roots in cybernetics and earlier attempts to model the brain as a system of simple parallel processors. Connectionist models center on statistical inference within neural networks with empirically learnable parameters, which can be represented as graphical models. More recent approaches focus on learning and inference within hierarchical generative models. Contra influential and ongoing critiques, I argue in this dissertation that the connectionist approach to cognitive science possesses in principle (and, as is becoming …

Mandarin Assessment In Chinese-English Bilingual Preschoolers, Jennifer A. Chard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Immigrant children who grow up in linguistically and culturally diverse households are at risk for misdiagnosis for language impairment and inappropriate placement in or exclusion from special education classes. Research shows that native language testing is essential in determining eligibility for disability services, as reflected both in federal law (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004). However, despite growing agreement that native language assessment is a critical component to understanding the abilities and challenges bilingual students face, the standard assessments currently used are largely administered in Standard English and normed on monolingual English speakers. Few options are available to …

The Equal Right To Sing: The American Zeitgeist And Its Implications For Music Education, Youngeun Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

According to music educators and proponents of arts education, music education in U.S. public schools seems to be in jeopardy. This thesis brings attention to several issues in current music education. It is a case study of music education in New York City public elementary schools. First, it shows that music education is not equally distributed to all students in the public-school system and is especially unequal among elementary schools. Next, it investigates possible causes for this inequality, from the current system’s limitations to more fundamental causes including the cultural perception of music among the U.S. public. The consequences of …

Articulation Of The Japanese Moraic Nasal: Place Of Articulation, Assimilation, And L2 Transfer, Ai Mizoguchi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The moraic nasal /N/ in Japanese has been transcribed in multiple ways, but very few studies have examined its articulation. The nature of its assimilation has often been described in phonology, but again, very few articulatory investigations have been conducted. Also, while a first language (L1) effect on second language (L2) production has been discussed for some phonemes, there is no good research on the effect of Japanese /N/ on L2 English syllable-final nasals. This dissertation investigates the articulation of the moraic nasal /N/ in Japanese using an ultrasound articulatory imaging technique to assess 1) its place of articulation, 2) …

Police Reform In Ukraine Since The Euromaidan: Police Reform In Transition And Institutional Crisis, Nicholas Pehlman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Why does reform of law enforcement remain so elusive in post-communist countries like Ukraine, despite political upheaval, a public mandate for reform and substantial international assistance? Which components contribute to the success and sustainability of a police reform and which factors produce political will from political leaders to implement the difficulties of police reform? This dissertation argues that in addition to massive corruption and the politics of insecurity, the greatest challenges to reform of Ukraine’s law enforcement system is political competition, resulting in the politicization of law enforcement institutions and law enforcement policy. Political competition is based in Ukraine’s fractured …

Visual Supports To Improve Outcomes For Culturally Diverse Students With Asd, Valeria Yllades, J. B. Ganz, Ching-Yi Liao

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

Gilberto is a young immigrant child with autism spectrum disorder who is growing up in a Mexican household. He often has trouble understanding his peers and teachers who speak English. With the help of the school, he is adjusting to a new culture, learning a new language, and working on educational outcomes. The example stated above illustrate issues related to conflicting language and culture between school and home contexts. Practical supports and interventions to address language and cultural barriers, for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) whose families are English Language Learners (ELLs), will be discussed in this article.The purpose …

Rural Adolescent Education Reframed: Can Social Justice, Lewin’S Topology, And Aesthetics Aid Reform Efforts?, Judith F. Upjohn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze how changes in classroom-level conditions can help underperforming students thrive despite established school structures that discriminate against and exclude those students from learning opportunities.

Every year, millions of US public school students fail to graduate high school (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2018), despite numerous ongoing education reform efforts (Berkshire & Schneider, n.d.; Strauss, 2017). A large percentage of these students attend rural schools (Arnold, Newman, Gaddy, & Dean, 2005; Status of Rural Education, 2018). The rural conditions of adolescent students adversely affect their educational performance and achievement (Howley …

The Post-9/11 Lgbtq Human Rights Struggle In Egypt, Donna K. Huaman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the struggle for LGBTQ human rights has become a leading standard that depicts whether or not a state can be considered modern and progressive. Yet, while this new criterion seems to be supported by Global North states, other nations in other regions, like Egypt from the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) has criticized the international pressure to implement this standard as neo-imperialist and inauthentic to its Muslim-Arab culture. Egypt claims to be the universal Arab-Muslim voice for the MENA region and has become one of the greatest challengers to the international campaign for …

Generative Adversarial Networks And Word Embeddings For Natural Language Generation, Robert D. Schultz Jr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We explore using image generation techniques to generate natural language. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), normally used for image generation, were used for this task. To avoid using discrete data such as one-hot encoded vectors, with dimensions corresponding to vocabulary size, we instead use word embeddings as training data. The main motivation for this is the fact that a sentence translated into a sequence of word embeddings (a “word matrix”) is an analogue to a matrix of pixel values in an image. These word matrices can then be used to train a generative adversarial model. The output of the model’s generator …

Re-Defining Gender And Sexuality In West African Theatre: Women Artists, Feminist Representations, And Same-Sex Desire In The Twenty-First Century Theatre Of Benin, Burkina Faso, And Togo, Heather J. Denyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines French-language theatre in the West African countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, and Togo that tackles gender-related themes. Topics often considered taboo, including domestic violence, child brides, and sexual desire, are publically addressed through contemporary theatre. The study focuses on the growing presence of women artists, including playwrights, actresses, and directors. Particularly since 2010, these artists have shifted the aesthetic and thematic substance of the theatre being created. Their presence has also generated new paths for plays written by and directed by men, including gay male characters and bold women. By considering the field of African women's studies …

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.]