Digital Commons Network^™

"An Endeavour At Something Spiritual": Queer Spirituality In Virginia Woolf's The Waves, Hannah Murdock

Theses and Dissertations

On November 7, 1928, Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary that her 1931 novel, The Waves, would be an "abstract mystical eyeless book" (Diaries 3; 203). In her personal writings, she also referred to the novel as "an endeavour at something mystic, spiritual; the thing that exists when we aren't there" (114). From the initial inspiration for the novel to her own notes, Woolf envisioned The Waves to be "spiritual" above all else. This project examines Woolf's engagement with spirituality throughout The Waves, particularly in the moments in the novel in which the queer characters--Rhoda and Neville--express sexual desire. In …

Disrupting Evasion Pedagogies, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Tricia Gray

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

As we have researched in schools and reflected on our own teaching, we have come to recognize the lie and our untruthfulness that permeates many of our cultural scripts (Gutierrez et al., 1995) and practices as teachers. It is within these cultural scripts and practices that inequity is perpetuated and humanizing learning evaded. Thus, what we term evasion pedagogies, serve to sustain the status quo and are powerful tools to maintain oppressive projects like white supremacy, heteronormativity, gender binaries, patriarchy, ableism, classism, and linguicism. In this piece, we examine the notion of evasion pedagogies as a powerful lie in practice …

Questioning Standards Of Evaluation In Educational Research: Do Educational Researchers Ventriloquize Learners’ Voices In L2 Education?, Anastasia A. Boldireff

The Qualitative Report

Learners are not stakeholders in their own education. Adhering to the quantitative gold standard in English as a Second Language (ESL) deprives the learner from having a voice in their learning process. This paper addresses voicelessness and ventriloquism in ESL, ventriloquism referring to the act of voicing the thoughts of another person, in this case the system overriding the learners’ experiences. This article addresses this problem, aligning itself with the Platinum standard while challenging the quantitative gold standard in ESL research. This paper offers resonance and semantic reliability as evaluative measures in educational research taken from literary criticism. The notion …

The Embodiment Of Discovery: An Adapted Framework For Qualitative Analysis Of Lived Experiences, Helen B. Hernandez, Laurie P. Dringus

The Qualitative Report

We reflect on our process of working with an adapted framework as an effective strategy for analyzing and interpreting the results of our qualitative study on the lived experiences of insulin pump trainers. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was applied as the overarching research methodology and was encapsulated into a framework adapted from Bonello and Meehan (2019) and from Chong (2019). We describe this framework as the “embodiment of discovery” to posit the researcher’s tangible experience of discovering the meaning of data that also brought transparency to the researcher’s process for data analysis and interpretation. We present challenges the doctoral student …

Extending Instantaneous De-Mixing Algorithms To Anechoic Mixtures, Swarnadeep Bagchi, Ruairí De Fréin

Conference papers

The AdRess algorithm separates sources that are mixed using stereo, pan-mixing in a computationally efficient way. Pan-mixing gives the sources a location in the stereo field by introducing a relative attenuation between the versions of the sources that appear on each channel. AdRess achieves separation by constructing only a frequency-attenuation matrix. We introduce a new algorithm called Delayed-AdRess (D-AdRess), where, in addition to the frequency-attenuation matrix, two other matrices namely, frequency-delay and time-delay are used to separate sources from anechoic mixtures. By anechoic mixtures, we mean mixing scenarios where both attenuation and delays are experienced by the source signals.

Autism-As-Machine Metaphors In Film And Television Sound, Erin Felepchuk

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Around the turn of the millennium, there was an outpouring of autistic representation in literature, film, and television. These resulted in a multitude of new cultural texts that reinforced damaging metaphors about autism that had previously emerged in medical discourse. In film and television, autistic people are portrayed through a variety of metaphors: as impenetrable fortress, missing puzzle pieces, confusing aliens, and as malfunctioning robots or supercomputers. In this paper, I examine the role of film and television sound in reinforcing the metaphor of autistic people as “unfeeling machines.” The unfeeling machine metaphor is personified through sound tracks that deploy …

Tolkien, Manuscripts, And Dialect, Edward Risden

Journal of Tolkien Research

Study of languages, names, and dialects may have been the greatest motivating factor in Tolkien's scholarship and his fiction: he found in every name (and even in every word) a story to unearth. Clear connections appear between the scholarly vector that connects his investigations into the Gawain-poet (his location and language), the Ancrene Riwle, and locating the linguistic variants in The Reeve's Tale, for instance, with the creation of the various speech patterns in The Lord of the Rings. Beyond the obvious examples of the Elvish languages Tolkien created, the Westron-Hobbiton dialect that Sam uses, variants among …

The Impact Of Parental Relationship In Promoting The Culture Of Citizenship Among Children: An Applied Study Of The Families Of El-Shati’ Refugee Camp In Gaza City, Palestine, Atef Elasouly

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

The study aimedtoidentify the impact of parentalrelationship in promotingthe culture of citizenship among children, with a particular focus onfamilies fromel-Shati’refugee, camp in Gaza City. The study was carried out on a sample consisting of (88) participants from heads of Palestinian householdsand their children livingin el-Shati’refugee campby using the descriptive approach. The researcher usedaquestionnairewhere one of the parentsfilledout the part assignedto him/her,and then one of theirchildren completethe other part with the researcher’shelp. Theresults of the participants’ responses to theeffect of parental relationshipwere high; the study showed that the percentage of all parental domains was (85.2%). The field of education rankedthefirst on …

Instructional Design With The Ice Approach In Academic Libraries: A Framework That Integrates Assessing, Learning, And Teaching, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

One-shot instruction in academic libraries is a librarian-controlled bibliographic instruction that responds to the point of information need for subject-related courses. The assessment of teaching effectiveness tends to take a summative approach, which provides an answer to what students learned but does not address how they learned. This column theoretically explores the framework of Ideas-Connections-Extensions (ICE) in library instruction and the classroom setting, which demonstrates learning outcomes and explores the learning journey, and integrates assessment, learning, and teaching through collaborative efforts by academic librarians and classroom faculty.

Expansion Of A Financial Education And Family Asset Protection Program For Latinos In Rural Minnesota, Antonio Alba-Meraz, Aysegul Baltaci, Carolina De La Rosa Mateo, Gabriela Burk, Jose Lamas, Francisca Mendoza, Monica Cruz-Zorrilla, Oswaldo Cabrera-Vidal

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

The University of Minnesota Extension, in partnership with the Consulate of Mexico in Saint Paul, Minnesota, expanded the Ventanilla de Asesoría Financiera -Financial Education and Family Asset Protection Program to serve families in rural areas. The financial education services were expanded to 25 rural counties in Minnesota during 2017 and 2018. Participants were primarily low-income Latino families of Mexican ancestry. The program consisted of financial literacy education workshops and one-to-one meetings to build and protect participant assets. Participants reported an increase in their confidence in five financial core topics. Conditions for the success of this program were (a) the existing …

June 2, 2021 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Mainstream Teachers’ Concerns About Inclusive Education For Children With Special Educational Needs And Disability In England Under Pre-Pandemic Conditions, Eleanor Warnes, Elizabeth J. Done, Helen Knowler

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

A survey-based investigation of teachers’ concerns was conducted the following adaptation of Sharma and Desai’s ‘Concerns about Integrated Education (CIE) Scale’ two decades ago. The terminology was adjusted and ‘integrated’ became ‘inclusive’, and ‘Special Educational Needs and / or Disability (SEND)’ replaced ‘disability’ in a novel ‘Concerns about Inclusive Education Scale’. A purposive sample included the public and private education sectors. An online questionnaire was completed in April 2020 (n = 93) by teachers (66: state mainstream, 18: independent, 5: UK-based international schools, 3: SEND specialists, 1: alternative provision). Statistical analysis of closed questions aimed to identify teachers’ concerns about …

Enacting An Equity Framework With A Teacher And Students In An Urban Elementary Classroom: A Qualitative Study, Samantha J. Haraf

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This purpose of this study was to engage a fifth grade teacher and students in the exploration and application of the EFE (Education for Equity) conceptual framework, and to develop understandings of how EFE functioned in this context. This framework, developed around a decade of equity-focused research in elementary contexts, outlines research-based categories of practices for equity work in elementary schools, and it draws attention to areas lacking attention in the literature. Using and extending from case study methods and participatory methods, I worked with a teacher and her students in this urban classroom for approximately six months in both …

Newsroom, Georgia Southern University

Newsroom (2006-2023)

• Writing and Linguistics faculty member, student researching inclusive technical editing practices
• Public health student named 2021 Outstanding Undergraduate Major of the Year by national honor society

Girlhood In The Great Outdoors, Maria Gregg

Silicon Valley Sociological Review

Women have historically been socialized to interact with the environment as caretakers or consumers, which has contrasted with men's role as an environmental conqueror. These roles have had an enduring effect on how girls have interacted with their identities and the available avenues for environmental activism. This paper investigates how those roles have manifested in two case studies: the Girl Scouts and VSCO girls. The Girl Scouts have historically focused on environmental service projects and teaching girls outdoors skills, and it uses cookie sales to fund these endeavors. VSCO girls embody an outdoorsy and sustainabilityinspired aesthetic and purport to "save …

Understanding Russia, Tyler M. Goldstein

Governance: The Political Science Journal at UNLV

This paper will develop a comprehensive analytical framework that endeavors to explain Russian incursions during the Putin era. The bedrock of this paper’s analytical model is that Russia’s fundamental motivation is having the means to challenge unilateral action and to make the other world powers twice about interfering in Russia’s affairs. This proposed theoretical model will be tested through four case studies, utilizing content analysis and process-tracing. The first case study will cover the Second Chechen War; the second case study will be of the 2008 Russo-Georgian war; the third case study will focus on Russia’s intervention in Ukraine; the …

Betwixt And Between: Liminality In Teachers’ Lives And In The Pandemic, Sunshine R. Sullivan, Ken Badley

International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal

The pandemic has altered the ways educators carry out their work, having forced them to switch en masse in March, 2020 to online instruction and then to various combinations of online and hybrid instruction. Along with educational policy-makers, classroom educators and school leaders wonder when education will return to normal and the degree to which educational normal will look like it did prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Educating during a pandemic fits the anthropological concept of liminality, of being between two states (introduced by van Gennep in 1909). After noting the origins and meaning of the concept of a liminal …

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me (Double) Consciousness: Literacy, Orality, Print, And The Cultural Formation Of Black American Identity In Harriet Jacobs’S Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl And Octavia Butler’S Kindred, Aisha Matthews

Third Stone

While literacy may have signified the humanity of male slaves in the antebellum South (at least in their own view), the English language and American print culture did not similarly empower female slaves towards positive subject-formation through discourse. This article will examine the tension between oral culture and print culture in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Ultimately, an analysis of Jacobs’s work through the lens of book history and its power to shape cultural formation will suggest a critical imperative for the contemporary neo-slave narrative genre.

Accordingly, the agency of contemporary …

The Production Of Epistemic Culture And Agency During A First-Grade Engineering Design Unit In An Urban Emergent School, Heidi B. Carlone, Alison K. Mercier, Salem R. Metzger

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

Primary school practices are often bound by traditions that perpetuate compliance and skills-based, decontextualized, rote memorization activities. These histories of practice, prevalent in schools serving mostly Black and Brown children, make it inordinately difficult for students to author themselves as knowledge builders (i.e., with epistemic agency), which is a form of injustice. Engineering is a potentially fertile context to support the creation of epistemic culture, whereby young students’ assets are recognized, named, and leveraged as they create and shape the group’s disciplinary knowledge. The authors investigated this potential. The primary research question was: How do first-grade students in an urban …

Equitable Pre-College Engineering Education: Teaching With Racism In Mind, James Holly Jr

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

Engineering educators must consider how the cultural backgrounds of students coincide (or diverge) with the epistemological and ontological formation of an engineer. Hence, this work is presented as an exhortation to engineering educators, particularly in a pre-college context, to critically evaluate how race-conscious pedagogies can be exerted in this field. In this autoethnographic study, I convey my attempt to teach engineering with explicit consideration of the sociopolitical context of the Black male youth I taught. As a Black male, I have an insider perspective into the realities that must be navigated to succeed in a racialized society, where Black males …

Multilingual Learners In Mainstream Classrooms, Mai Kong Pheng Yang

Innovations and Critical Issues in Teaching and Learning

The United States of America has always been known for its diversity. A country that promises to “The Land of the Free.” Many people migrate in hopes of having a better future for themselves and for their children. Along with the high diversity rates in the United States, the different number of languages are also high and yet English is the main language taught in schools. As English maintains its dominance in the education system, many students fall into the category of an English Language Learner. These students are expected to learn the English language to strive in the education …

Minority Health Disparities In A 21st-Century Pandemic: A Comprehensive Report Of Project Research Focused On New York, University At Albany, Suny, Nys Covid-19 Minority Health Disparities Team

Publications, Issue Briefs, Reports, Etc

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacted a starkly unequal toll on New Yorkers of color – both in terms of the virus itself and the accompanying social and economic impacts of the pandemic. These are not separate issues. They stem from the structural racism embedded in American society. While our work begins by establishing a statistical baseline for how the virus’s unequal toll played out in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, any analysis of these disparities that looks solely at hospitalizations and deaths misses a tremendous piece of this tragic and preventable story. Minority health disparities …

Rememoration, ‘Sticky Associations,’ And Social Media Performativity In The Pegida Movement, Haedyn Smith

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I investigate the process of rememoration and Sara Ahmed’s notion of ‘sticky associations’ on Lutz Bachmann’s Instagram—founder of the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident (Pegida)—from October 2015 to March 2021. I argue that Instagram becomes a stage in a performance of ‘the people’ vis-à-vis the migrant Other. Through the repetition of posts, hashtags, and comments that dehumanize migrants and disparage the German government, Bachmann and his following circulate emotions that carry political ‘stickiness’ that attaches to some bodies and objects, but not to others. Stickiness creates boundaries around the ‘we’ and the ‘them,’ and …

On The Generalization Of Interval Valued Fuzzy Generalized Bi-Ideals In Ordered Semigroups, Muhammad S. Ali Khan, Saleem Abdullah, Kostaq Hila

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

In this paper, a new general form than interval valued fuzzy generalized bi-ideals in ordered semigroups is introduced. The concept of interval valued fuzzy generalized bi-ideals is initiated and several properties and characterizations are provided. A condition for an interval valued fuzzy generalized bi-ideal to be an interval valued fuzzy generalized bi-ideal is obtained. Using implication operators and the notion of implication-based an interval valued fuzzy generalized bi-ideal, characterizations of an interval valued fuzzy generalized bi-ideal and an interval valued fuzzy generalized bi-ideal are considered.

Does Justice Have A Syntax?, Steven L. Winter

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Why Cauchy Membership Functions: Efficiency, Javier Viana, Stephan Ralescu, Kelly Cohen, Anca Ralescu, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Fuzzy techniques depend heavily on eliciting meaningful membership functions for the fuzzy sets used. Often such functions are obtained from data. Just as often they are obtained from experts knowledgable of the domain and the problem being addressed. However, there are cases when neither is possible, for example because of insufficient data, or unavailable experts. What functions should one choose and what should guide such choice? This paper argues in favor of using Cauchy membership functions, thus named because their expression is similar to that of the Cauchy distributions. The paper provides a theoretical explanation for this choice.

Lexical Complexity Prediction With Assembly Models, Aadil Islam

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

Tuning the complexity of one's writing is essential to presenting ideas in a logical, intuitive manner to audiences. This paper describes a system submitted by team BigGreen to LCP 2021 for predicting the lexical complexity of English words in a given context. We assemble a feature engineering-based model and a deep neural network model with an underlying Transformer architecture based on BERT. While BERT itself performs competitively, our feature engineering-based model helps in extreme cases, eg. separating instances of easy and neutral difficulty. Our handcrafted features comprise a breadth of lexical, semantic, syntactic, and novel phonetic measures. Visualizations of BERT …

Fine-Grained Detection Of Hate Speech Using Bertoxic, Yakoob Khan

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

This thesis describes our approach towards the fine-grained detection of hate speech using deep learning. We leverage the transformer encoder architecture to propose BERToxic, a system that fine-tunes a pre-trained BERT model to locate toxic text spans in a given text and utilizes additional post-processing steps to refine the prediction boundaries. The post-processing steps involve (1) labeling character offsets between consecutive toxic tokens as toxic and (2) assigning a toxic label to words that have at least one token labeled as toxic. Through experiments, we show that these two post-processing steps improve the performance of our model by 4.16% on …

Deterring Intellectual Property Thieves: Algorithmic Generation Of Adversary-Aware Fake Knowledge Graphs, Snow Kang

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

Publicly available estimates suggest that in the U.S. alone, IP theft costs our economy between $225 billion and $600 billion each year. In our paper, we propose combating IP theft by generating fake versions of technical documents. If an enterprise system has n fake documents for each real document, any IP thief must sift through an array of documents in an attempt to separate the original from a sea of fakes. This costs the attacker time and money - and inflicts pain and frustration on the part of its technical staff.

Leveraging a graph-theoretic approach, we created the Clique-FakeKG algorithm …

Exploring The Long Tail, Joseph H. Hajjar

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

The migration of datasets online has created a near-infinite inventory for big name retailers such as Amazon and Netflix, giving rise to recommendation systems to assist users in navigating the massive catalog. This has also allowed for the possibility of retailers storing much less popular, uncommon items which would not appear in a more traditional brick-and-mortar setting due to the cost of storage. Nevertheless, previous work has highlighted the profit potential which lies in the so-called "long tail'' of niche, unpopular items. Unfortunately, due to the limited amount of data in this subset of the inventory, recommendation systems often struggle …