Digital Commons Network^™

Los Zetas, Neoliberalism, And Popular Opposition: A Study In Linkages, Gina R. Lyle

Master's Theses

Los Zetas are considered by security analysts to be a transformative force within transnational criminal organizations (TCO), exporting their unique model throughout Mexico. Los Zetas’ idiosyncratic interventions include their diversification of criminal operations, professionalization of TCO security, sophisticated use of media and technology, extreme forms of violent coercion, and decentralized command structure. This project aims to complicate the narrative that Los Zetas emerged because of top leaders’ sadistic tendencies or due to an inherently violent culture in Mexico by reframing the group’s evolution within historical processes. Moving beyond Los Zetas, this project examines how persons affected by Los Zetas’ indiscriminate …

Domestic Terrorism In The Developing World: Role Of Food Security, Nisha Bellinger, Kyle T. Kattelman

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article sheds light on the root causes of terrorism by assessing the effect of food security on domestic terrorism among developing countries. Food security is a fundamental physiological need and captures a core well-being outcome. We argue that food insecurity creates grievances among citizens and increases demand among them for action against the government. Terrorist organisations provide the opportunity for citizens to channel their grievances against the government by resolving collective action problems and mobilising citizens. We demonstrate the link between food insecurity and domestic terrorism through quantitative analyses on a sample of 70 developing countries from 1980 to …

Graduates Of The College Of The Holy Cross Naval Rotc Unit 1944-2021, Brendan J. O'Donnell

Naval Science Department

A report of the Navy and Marine Corps officers commissioned through the Naval ROTC Unit at the College of the Holy Cross from 1944 to 2021. This report is a revised and expanded version of the Unit's history, published in 2016 by the O'Callahan Society on the occasion of the Unit's 75th anniversary and revised in 2017 and 2019. It includes updates, additional information and corrections to the 2016 report.

Associated with this report is a spreadsheet that breaks down the commissioning numbers by year and, within each year, by Service and college. It is included as a supplemental file.

Reflections On The Value Of Socio-Legal Approaches To International Economic Law In Africa, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Chicago Journal of International Law

In their Lead Essay for the 2021 Chicago Journal of International Law Symposium, Daniel Abebe, Adam Chilton, and Tom Ginsburg offer an account of “the rise of the social science approach to international law, explain the basics of the method, and advocate for its continued adoption.” This Essay critically assesses how and why one might use socio-legally inspired methods (analytical, empirical, and normative) for the study of international economic law (IEL) in Africa. It illustrates the empirical method’s importance in understanding one of the most challenging aspects of the study of IEL in Africa: capturing the data and dynamism of …

The Limits Of International Law Fifteen Years Later, Jack L. Goldsmith, Eric A. Posner

Chicago Journal of International Law

The Limits of International Law received a great deal of criticism when it was published in 2005, but it has aged well. The skeptical, social-scientific methodology that it recommended has become a normal mode of international law scholarship. And the dominant idealistic view of international law that the book criticized is today in shambles, unable to explain the turmoil in international politics. This Essay reflects on the book’s reception and corrects common misperceptions of its arguments

Saver (Surface Autonomous Vehicle For Emergency Rescue), Tyler Jorgensen, Ethan Miller, Josephine Isaacson, Joshua Hoye

Mechanical Engineering

This document serves to introduce the design team and their competition challenge, as well as to detail the results of the project. The original design challenge was the NASA Micro-g NExT’s SAVER (Surface Autonomous Vehicle for Emergency Rescue) competition; we were tasked with developing a self-driving water vehicle capable of delivering supplies to Orion astronauts separated from the rest of their crew in the case of a maritime emergency. However, we were not selected to go forward in this competition and thus we decided to scale down the size of the SAVER device to shift the focus of the project …

Selective Justice: A Crisis Of Missing And Murdered Alaska Native Women, Megan Mallonee

Alaska Law Review

Across the country, Indigenous women are murdered more than any other population and go missing at disproportionate rates. This crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is amplified in Alaska, where the vast landscape, a confusing jurisdictional scheme, and a history of systemic racism all create significant barriers to justice for Alaska Native women. This Note examines the roots of the crisis and calls for a holistic response that acknowledges the role of colonialism, Indigenous genocide, and governmental failures. While this Note focuses on the epidemic of violence against Alaska Native women in particular, it seeks to provide solutions that …

Fighting Words: Targeting Speech In Armed Conflict, A. Louis Evans

Washington International Law Journal

Freedom of speech is considered one of the most fundamental human rights, but it is not without limits. In the context of an armed conflict, engaging in certain types of speech can form the basis for lethal targeting by States. Consensus exists in customary international law that speech-driven strikes constitute a lawful use of force under jus in bello standards. For example, a civilian who communicates the position of targets, or broadcasts tactical intelligence for a specific military operation has, by their speech, made themselves a lawful target. While customary international law agrees that speech-driven targeting is lawful, there has …

Development Of A Marine Biodegradable Target Balloon, Blake Samuel Robinson, Arash Sam Akhavi, David Leonardo Albarran-Martinez

Materials Engineering

The US Navy utilizes PVC target balloons, known as Killer Tomatoes, that are inflated onboard a naval vessel then deployed into the ocean to calibrate a variety of weaponry. The Navy has requested the investigation of biodegradable polymers to replace the PVC in attempts to reduce ocean waste that is generated from the leftover PVC material. After communicating with American Pacific Plastic Fabricators (APPF), the current manufacturer of the Killer Tomatoes, we gained an understanding of the manufacturing process and the material requirements that would allow a new material to be integrated into their current process. Two proprietary, trial polymers …

“Venerated For Their Bloody Deeds” English Medievalism In Literature, World War I Aviation, And Memorials, Levy Walton Pait

Masters Theses

Aviators of World War I were trailblazers of the sky. That much is certain. However, there has been a historical debate about their reputation as “knights of the air.” During the war and for many years afterward, World War I aviators were compared to medieval knights battling in honorable duels amongst the clouds. This was an idea popularized by the pilots themselves. David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister during World War I, described pilots, “‘They are the knighthood of this war… they recall the legendary days of chivalry not merely by the daring of their exploits but by the nobility …

Loyalist Preachers During The American Revolution (1765-1783), Christena Renea Leaverton

Masters Theses

“Loyalists were those who remained loyal to the British Crown and did not support America’s fight for independence leading up to, and during, the American Revolution. Being loyal to the crown was the normal practice for all Americans prior to the increasing call for independence.” In the time leading up to and during the American Revolution (1765-1783), Loyalist preachers defended their stance on remaining loyal to Great Britain utilizing Bible themes and specific verses. Oftentimes, as with the Patriots, these Loyalist preachers took these themes and verses out of context or misquoted them. They also used Bible themes and verses …

Pedagogically Reclaiming Marx’S Politics In The Postdigital Age: Social Formations And Althusserian Pedagogical Gestures, Derek R. Ford

Education Studies Faculty publications

This paper builds on marxist postdigital literature by first by clarifying what a ‘mode of production’ is, what the capitalist mode of production is, and how, why, and on what technological foundations it emerged. This leads into a discussion of these technological foundations and their relationship to production, knowledge, research, and subjectivity; in other words, the ‘general intellect’. At this point I move from discussing modes of production to social formations or socio-economic formations, and I show why social formations are more helpful to conceptualize the political and pedagogical struggle in the era of postdigital capitalism (and any capitalism) as …

The Pla Beyond Borders: Chinese Military Operations In Regional And Global Context, Joel Wuthnow, Arthur S. Ding, Phillip C. Saunders, Andrew Scobell, Andrew N.D. Yang, John Chen, Dean Cheng, Chung Chieh, Kieran Green, Kristen Gunness, Isaac B. Kardon, Ying-Yu Lin, Joe Mcreynolds, Jonah Victor, Shinji Yamaguchi

Books and Book Chapters

No longer confined to China’s land territory or its near abroad, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is conducting increasingly complex operations farther and farther from China’s continental borders. Within Asia, the PLA now regularly operates into the far reaches of the South China Sea and deep into the Western Pacific, enforcing China’s territorial claims and preparing to counter U.S. intervention in a regional conflict. Beyond Asia, the PLA is present on the ground, at sea, or in military exercises with foreign partners across the Indian Ocean and into the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Foreign militaries now regularly encounter the …

Visitor (Tourist) Harassment Research: Delphi Panels, Shweta Singh, Annmarie Nicely, Liping Cai, Jonathan Day

Visitor Harassment Research Unit Special Papers

The harassment of visitors at destinations is a pressing problem globally. It is also an emerging area of scholastic inquiry. This article explores one research technique that, despite its ability to generate new and innovative solutions to a range of problems, is not currently used in visitor harassment (VH) research: the Delphi Panel Research Method. The authors assert, if applied correctly, the technique could significantly advance knowledge in this research stream. The article also explores the technique’s evolution; the broad thoughts on which the technique is based; when the technique should be used; how the technique should be applied; …

Teaching Law And Artificial Intelligence, Brendan Johnson, Francis X. Shen

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Writing Gender In Early Modern Chinese Women's Tanci Fiction, Li Guo

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Women’s tanci, or “plucking rhymes,” are chantefable narratives written by upper-class educated women from seventeenth-century to early twentieth-century China. Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women's Tanci Fiction offers a timely study on early modern Chinese women’s representations of gender, nation, and political activism in their tanci works before and after the Taiping Rebellion (1850 to 1864), as well as their depictions of warfare and social unrest.

Women tanci authors’ redefinition of female exemplarity within the Confucian orthodox discourses of virtue, talent, chastity, and political integrity could be bourgeoning expressions of female exceptionalism and could have foreshadowed protofeminist ideals …

The Toughest Apologetic: A Study On Christians Who Deconvert, Jeffery L. Childress

Masters Theses

Christianity is distinct from any other world religion, philosophy, or ideology in how it explains universal origin, meaning, destiny, and morality. The Christian message is also unique in promise of a personal and life-changing relationship with the Creator God. One can hardly deny the influence of the Christian faith has had on humanity over the past two thousand years. However, a growing number of those believers who once claimed commitment to the transcendent message and transformative power of Jesus Christ eventually rescind belief in their faith and renounce their deeply held spiritual convictions. This paper explores why people with roots …

(In)Hospitable Modernity: Hospitality And Its Discontents (1920–1953), Daniel A. Hengel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the tacit forms of political activity operating through the performance and space of hospitality in modern fiction. I read the habitus, praxis, and dissemblages of hospitality in modern fiction as conduits that reveal dialectics of submission and resistance to Victorian and Edwardian markers of normativity. This is ultimately an infrapolitical work. I locate fulcrums of dissent, cloaked in a guise of hospitality, in the domestic sphere and the politicization of formerly private spaces into sites with the potential to reorder legitimated forms of agency. This project attempts to uncover veiled forms of sociopolitical resistance in and through …

Points Of Reference: Humanities Content For Media Studies, Carolyn A. Mcdonough

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Points of Reference: Humanities Content for Media Studies is a proposed research method designed for students to help them analyze humanities content encountered in undergraduate media studies courses, specifically within commercial advertising. The project is informed by Critical Theory developed by The Frankfurt School as well as by contemporary digital humanities scholars. Points of Reference theorizes a digital pedagogical training tool as a browsing gallery that helps student separate humanities references embedded into media, and to contravene the dominance of Google Search.

The Second Kashmir (Informational) War Of 1965, Navdip Hans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Second Kashmir (Informational) War of 1965 considers that Pakistan over-optimistically assessed information prior to the onset of hostilities with India. This thesis posits that information released from significant battlefield events quickly dispelled Pakistan's optimism which led to an accurate updating of beliefs and expectations. This resulted in a downward revision of demands by Pakistan to convergence with India resulting in settlement ending the war.

Monumentality, Fortification, And Movement: Preclassic Maya Developments As Seen At Muralla De León, Petén, Guatemala, Justin D. Bracken

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Analysis of settlement patterning in relation to natural and constructed defensive elements expands understanding of the impact of warfare well beyond the relatively brief period of active battle. Advance preparation in advance of conflict, including reshaping the landscape for defensibility and conscription of labor toward that end, alters patterns of movement, social interaction, and physical settlement, effects that can extend for generations beyond the cessation of hostilities. This project investigates the role played by warfare in shaping the physical and social landscape of the Maya of the central Petén during the Late Preclassic period (400 B.C. – A.D. 150), as …

"Rivals And Partners”: The Competition For Control Of Judenpolitik In Reichskommissariat Ostland (1941–1944), Barbara Lynne Bailin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation recounts and investigates the impact of the bureaucratic conflicts inherent in the Nazi state apparatus in the implementation of Judenpolitik in an underdeveloped research area--the mass murder of Baltic Jews during World War II. It focuses specifically on Hinrich Lohse, the newly appointed Reichskommissar of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, the German-occupied Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and parts of western Belorussia in the Soviet Union (known as the RKO), as he sought to navigate the bureaucratic clashes in what was, arguably, one of the most contentious conflicts within the senior Nazi leadership, that is, the Wehrmacht’s …

Information Justice: The Histories And Futures Of Technology And Social Categories, Patrick Sweeney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation examines two controversies related to emergent uses of information from social media in psychological research and application. It focuses on controversies surrounding studies of face-based gaydar and the use of psychographic targeting by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 US presidential election. Each controversy is analyzed in a case study that explores the issues specific to that study in relation to broader patterns across contexts to identify emergent trends in the use of information from social media in psychological research. Qualitative Content Analysis is used to analyze extant texts relevant to each case. In each study, findings related to …

Critical Climates: Stimmung, Voice And Mythopoesis In German Literature From 1950–1989, Marc Cesar Rickenbach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Critical Climates examines the interest in myth among a number of literary figures from 1950 to 1989 in relation to the concurrent re-emergence of the German aesthetic concept of Stimmung. At once referring to atmosphere, milieu, mood, disposition and harmony, while carrying along its root Stimme, or voice, this dissertation shows how Stimmung informed a literary practice among German-language authors that engaged the relationship between narrative, ideology and collective moods in a way that can be spoken of in terms of a mythopoesis. This project builds upon contemporary scholarship that focuses on Stimmung as a way to refigure …

Toward The Black Indian Ocean: Race And The Human Project In The Afro-Asian Imagination, Micheal A. Rumore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Toward the Black Indian Ocean: Race and the Human Project in the Afro-Asian Imagination” asks the question: why hasn’t the Indian Ocean been typically theorized as an African diasporic site? While the burgeoning discipline of Indian Ocean studies frequently positions notions of oceanic “cosmopolitanism” as a way of engaging with universalist anticolonial aspirations, the field has been limited by static conceptions of the African continent. In response, this dissertation argues that the marginalization of Black Africans in conceptions of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism reflects a colonial provenance and attempts to delineate this representational history. Theoretically, I engage with Black feminist critiques …

The Founding Fathers Of American Jihad: The Impacts And Legacies Of Anwar Al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, And Ahmad Abousamra, Haroro J. Ingram, Jon Lewis, Program On Extremism, George Washington University, National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, And Education Center

Reports, Projects, and Research

Three Americans have had a profound impact on the evolution of jihadist English-language propaganda, particularly in the online magazine format, and revolutionized jihadi strategic, operational, and ideological trends in the West: Anwar al-Awlaki (1971-2011) and Samir Khan (1985-2011) who edited Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire, and Ahmad Abousamra (1981-2017) who edited the Islamic State’s Dabiq and Rumiyah magazines. The Americans were not the first to publish English-language magazines designed to appeal to Western audiences and mobilize support for wars in Muslim lands. That distinction arguably goes to the Cultural Council of Afghanistan Resistance and its quarterly magazine Afghan Jehad, …

The Phenomena Of Acculturation In First-Generation Somali Refugee Women, Bobbi L. Avery

All Theses And Dissertations

The decision to relocate and seek refuge from one country to another country is a decision that typically requires careful consideration (Hucklesby & Travis, 2002). The most common reasons refugees decide to flee their country are religious, national, social, racial, or political persecution (Rueckert, 2017). The purpose of this qualitative, narrative study was to give a voice to three first-generation adult Somali refugee women who have shared their acculturation and adaptation experiences upon arriving in the United States. The research question this study answered was how do first-generation Somali women describe their individual experiences in acculturating within the United States, …

Saver (Surface Autonomous Vehicle For Emergency Rescue), Adam Swarhout, Holly Johnson, Zach Rannalli

Mechanical Engineering

This document serves to introduce the design team and their competition challenge, as well as to detail the progress of the project. The design challenge was presented by NASA Micro-g NExT’s SAVER (Surface Autonomous Vehicle for Emergency Rescue) competition; the goal was to design a self-driving water vehicle capable of delivering supplies to Orion astronauts separated from the rest of their crew in the case of a maritime emergency. However, the team was not selected to go forward in this competition and thus decided to scale down the size of the SAVER vehicle in order to shift the focus of …

Developing And Assessing A Workshop That Utilizes A Serious Game To Introduce Joint All-Domain Operations, Christopher M. Voltz

Theses and Dissertations

The DoD has begun developing Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO) to prepare for the future of warfare. As complexity and technological capability increases, the U.S. military needs to adapt to provide a more lethal and capable force, able to compete and win against near-peer adversaries. This research describes the development of an Introduction to JADO Workshop designed to provide a structured primer into JADO concepts. The research also presents an extension of BSN in the form of BSN scenarios. These scenarios alter the rules to lessen the learning curve for the game and to engage with JADO concepts. This research proposed …

Fidelity In Institutional Structure: Divine Family Formation And The Variance Of Church Amid Dysfunctional Behavior, Terrence Lyne Toliver

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

There has been a rift in the providential establishment of our Lord. Humanity is indulgent unto sin and the family is suffering. Disobedience and selfishness have blinded humankind into a false sense of reality. The fallacy has taken the place of divine order in the chosen avenues into humanism depicted as science, technology, philosophy, cultism, and any other route devoid of Christ. Therefore, this in-depth study seeks to dispel or to bring to light a revelation of where humanity rests in the grand scheme of contemporary life. Two notions of preponderance present themselves, to forgo selfishness and to embrace righteousness. …