Digital Commons Network^™

A Plea For Survival: Can The Return To Eco-Centrism Strengthen The Legal Protection Of Nature In Sri Lanka?, Asanka Edirisinghe, Michelle Mei Ling Lim

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The right to life of all living beings and the duty of humans to co-exist with nature have been recognized in Sri Lankan tradition and religious practice for centuries. Yet, environmental destruction, degradation and pollution due to human activities have become a common phenomenon in contemporary Sri Lanka. Anthropocentric thinking pervades Sri Lankan jurisprudence. Laws and judicial decisions have largely failed to recognize the rights of nature to be protected for its relational and intrinsic values. There is also limited acknowledgement that the very survival of human beings depends on the continuous existence of Mother Earth. Significant shifts from human-centred …

The Weight Of The Interaction: An Exploration Of Fat Women's Experiences In Healthcare Settings, Danielle Snow

Masters Theses

Despite making up a large portion of the United States population, fat people are stigmatized, discriminated against, and treated as deviant. Though there is a large body of interdisciplinary literature on obesity and health, and a large body of sociological literature on stigma, there is little literature on fat stigma. Thus, using a Goffman’s stigma theory with the added contribution of Foucault’s concept the medical gaze and medical anthropological concept delegitimization, this qualitative thesis explores the health care experiences of 13 White and 2 Black fat women in the U.S. First, context for fatness and health is explored within chapter …

Sunbelt Schooling: Publics And Politics Of Education Advocacy In Phoenix, Arizona, Matthew Chrisler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For the past forty years, public education in the United States has been the target of both neoliberal and conservative education reforms that have imposed austerity and privatization, set limits on racial, gendered, and sexual citizenship, increased school responsibility for social reproduction, and winnowed visions of public education as both a universal social entitlement and site of participatory democracy. These reforms emerged from, and remain powerfully anchored in, the United States Sunbelt, a crescent of metropolitan suburbs spanning southern California to Florida. This region propelled the conservative revolution in American politics but is also the site of progressive organizing that, …

Practicing Abolition: A Digital Roundtable On Abolitionist Pedagogy, Samantha Lilienfeld

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project explores education and pedagogy as sites for abolitionist practice, and approaches abolitionism as a method by building on the idea of abolition democracy. Using the framework of abolition as a pedagogical practice, I see teaching and learning as urgent tasks of contemporary abolitionism. My project integrates research and scholarship on the abolition of prisons and policing with practices of pedagogy, in part by thinking interdisciplinarily with students and scholars working within CUNY. Practicing Abolition: A Digital Roundtable on Abolitionist Pedagogy incorporates voices from students and scholars about how they practice abolitionist pedagogy in higher education by presenting …

The Arv Treatment Adherence Model: A Qualitative Study On Antiretroviral (Arv) Treatment Adherence For People Living With Hiv, Danielle Strauss

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Adherence to antiretroviral (ARV) treatment improves life expectancy and other health outcomes for people living with HIV (PLWH). It also minimizes their risk of transmitting HIV through sexual contact and is therefore a form of HIV prevention. However, many PLWH, specifically low-income PLWH of color who have been disproportionately impacted by the virus, face a multitude of barriers to ARV treatment adherence, making it much harder for them to take their medication as prescribed and remain engaged in care. This qualitative study based on Constructivist Grounded Theory explored the process by which 14 virally suppressed, low-income PLWH of color overcame …

Justice And The Mathematics Classroom: Realizing The Goals Of The Amte Standards For Preparing Teachers Of Mathematics, Shandy Hauk, Marilyn Strutchens, Dorothy Y. White, Jennifer Bay-Williams, Jenq Jong Tsay, Billy Jackson

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

This chapter is an introduction to justice in the post-secondary context of mathematics courses for prospective teachers. The chapter is a research-to-practice report (i.e., it describes an aspect of instruction and discusses how it is informed by, connects to, or is illustrative of findings from research). While the reader might be any type of mathematics teacher educator, the focus here is supporting those who teach mathematics content courses for elementary school teacher candidates. In addition to having an effect on discipline-specific knowledge, college mathematics classes contribute to the ways candidates communicate in/with/through mathematics in working with children. The chapter includes …

Look At All Those Big Knobs! Online Audio Technology Discourse And Sexy Gear Fetishes, Eliot Bates, Samantha Bennett

Publications and Research

Despite a predominantly digital, 21st century music production landscape, analogue hardware professional audio technologies persist. In the discoursal throes of the leading online audio technology message forum Gearslutz, such technologies are routinely objectified, sexualized, fetishized and socialized into gear. Situated in a contemporary critical, interdisciplinary framework of fetish, masculinity and sexuality studies, this research interrogates how audio technologies manufactured and intended for music production contexts become sexy. Applying a mixed-mode methodology, including an intensive discourse, image and material-semiotic analysis of an ‘epic’ sexy gear thread, we collated extensive data about technological fetishization. Sexy gear discourse articulates themes of voyeurism, acquisition, …

Neoliberal Hegemonic Masculinity And Mcmindfulness: The Need For Buddhist Values And Principles In Mindful Masculinity Programs, David Forbes

Publications and Research

This paper explores how certain Buddhist-inspired principles such as impermanence of self and compassion for all (metta) and the practice of mindfulness can contribute to challenging ways in which young men adopt troublesome aspects of systemic patriarchy. It (1) briefly examines the problem of systemic patriarchy in its most dominant forms, neoliberal hegemonic masculinity and right-wing racist authoritarian masculinity; (2) critically discusses examples of mindfulness education and counseling programs for young men that have been severed from their Buddhist origins (McMindfulness) that attempt to challenge young men around patriarchal beliefs and thoughts but end up reproducing neoliberal hegemonic masculinity; (3) …

Leadership Failures That Lead To Poor Organizational Performance, Brahaspattie Annie Singh

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Our world continues to change rapidly because of globalization and internationalism thus has become more multicultural and diverse that strong and effective leadership was needed in the workforce. The real estate industry has changed as well and continues to change because of multiculturalism. The effects of COVID-19 placed burdensome restrictions and regulations both from the state and city levels that firms must follow in order to function internally and externally to market properties. The effects of COVID-19 will forever change the way business is done as usual, where the general business practice must include a constant of new critical change …

The Silent Holocaust And Other Myths: The Jewish Body And Intermarriage In The Fiction Of Saul Bellow And Philip Roth, Samuel Gold

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation concerns the legacy within the Jewish American imagination of two related ideas: the pseudoscientific belief in the Jewish body’s inherent physical difference, and the conviction, shared by rabbis, sociologists, and Jewish advocacy organizations in the second half of the 20th century, that Jewish-gentile intermarriage threatened Jewish survival in America. The Jew’s association with illness and debility is central to the Nazi race theories that undergird the Holocaust; the postwar American anxiety over intermarriage responds to that destruction. Fearing that intermarriage may yield a second, “silent” Holocaust through assimilation, American Jewish leaders metaphorically equate exogamy (out-marriage) with genocide.

I …

Water Sharing Is A Distressing Form Of Reciprocity: Shame, Upset, Anger, And Conflict Over Water In Twenty Cross-Cultural Sites, Amber Wutich, Asher Rosinger, Alexandra Brewis, Melissa Beresford, Sera Young

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Anthropological theories of reciprocity suggest it enhances prestige, social solidarity, and material security. Yet, some ethnographic cases suggest that water sharing—a form of reciprocity newly gaining scholarly attention—might work in the opposite way, increasing conflict and emotional distress. Using cross-cultural survey data from twenty global sites (n = 4,267), we test how household water reciprocity (giving and receiving) is associated with negative emotional and social outcomes. Participation in water sharing as both givers and receivers is consistently associated with greater odds of reporting shame, upset, and conflict over water. Water sharing experiences in a large, diverse sample confirm a lack …

Streets Of Grievance: Everyday Poetics And Postcolonial Politics In Urban Algeria, Stephanie Victoria Love

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the intersections of language, settler-colonial and postcolonial politics, and urbanism in North Africa (Algeria). It is an urban and linguistic ethnography of Oran, Algeria’s second-largest city, based on sixteen months of ethnographic, linguistic anthropological, and archival research conducted in Arabic and French. I show how contemporary Oranis mobilize language as a key resource in contemporary urban politics, which are inextricably tied to French colonialism’s material remnants, rubble, and legacies. In contemporary Oran, the connection between the colonial past and the postcolonial present remains palpable, even sixty years after independence; however, while the postcolonial Algerian state has long …

Everything To Lose: Extraction, Racism, And Survival On Wet'suwet'en Land, Anne Spice

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work critically analyzes the role of extractive industry in the continued colonization of Indigenous peoples and occupation of Indigenous lands, and examines how Indigenous resistance to oil and gas projects augments the damaging effects of fossil fuel extraction and create alternative possibilities for life in the face of catastrophic environmental crises. In Wet’suwet’en territory, in Northern British Columbia, Canada, construction has begun on the fracked gas Coastal GasLink pipeline, despite the opposition of local Indigenous leaders and chiefs. Several Indigenous land reoccupation camps have been set up by Wet’suwet’en people to resist the pipeline’s construction, and the resulting conflict …

Diet And Nutrition Of Lemurs In The Lean Season, Santiago Cassalett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Animals must navigate complex food and nutrient environments that are constantly in flux to obtain the macro and micronutrients necessary for their growth, reproduction, and survival. The nutritional needs of animals also vary over the life course, further complicating the search for adequate foods and the nutrients within them. The hypervariable and unpredictable environment of Madagascar creates a complex nutrient landscape for lemurs in particular because they are subject to large fluctuations in food availability. These fluctuations are thought to create extreme periods of nutritional stress during the dry season (known as the lean season) for lemurs. In response, lemurs …

Nunc Pauperis Agri: Rural Fantasy And Economic Reality In The Elegies Of Tibullus, Victoria Elizabeth Jansson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that attention to economic anxieties in Tibullus’ elegies is crucial to understanding his corpus. Concerns about agricultural production, globalized trade, and institutional power recur throughout the elegies. An appreciation of economic desire may not only produce a fruitful reading of Tibullus’ poetry, but also help to answer some of the questions suggested by elegy’s socio-historical framework. This project relies methodologically on both economic analysis and a Lacanian psychoanalytic framework. Additionally, each chapter explores a different facet of religious experience in the elegies: the myth of the Golden Age, prayers to the goddess Ceres, and references to the …

Fragmentation And Fabulation: Reflexivity And The New Black Documentary, Joanna Lehan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis concerns the photographic representation of Black bodies in new, reflexive documentary forms that have been increasingly produced and exhibited in the midst of America’s renewed discourse on race. Approaching this argument categorically, focused on the themes of fabulation and fragmentation, my task here is to uncover the gaps and overlaps between earlier critiques of the documentary image and more recent discourse on photography and race by exploring the specific methods through which select recent documentary projects embed and expand these critiques.

Fragmentation is a category of production I use to frame a movement of Black photographic artists …

Genetic Impacts Of Deforestation On Mouse Lemurs, Darice Westphal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The impact of deforestation on the genetic structure of mouse lemurs is poorly understood. In this project, I assess deforestation of Madagascar’s terrestrial protected regions, quantify genomic wide genetic variation in two sympatric mouse lemurs, and evaluate the role of landscape structure in genetic relatedness patterns within two sympatric mouse lemur species. Overall deforestation rates across the 98 terrestrial protected areas in Madagascar are increasing, resulting in an average annual deforestation rate of 0.68% per year, with approximately 10,600 km² lost between 2000 and 2019. In a comparison of relatedness patterns between the sympatric gray mouse lemur (Microcebus …

An Overview And Assessment Of The Editorial Assistant Position At Women’S Studies Quarterly, Amy M. Iafrate

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper represents the culmination of my internship at Women’s Studies Quarterly, and documents my experience of working from September 2020, to June 2021. I will begin with a discussion of the journal’s historical importance; from its origin in 1972, to its more contemporary issues. This background will segue into a critical analysis of my role at the journal, supported by anecdotes and ideas of critical feminist theorists.

All Aboard The Abortion Pill Train: Activism, Medicine, And Reproductive Technologies In The Republic Of Ireland, Brenna Mccaffrey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The successful legalization of abortion in the Republic of Ireland in 2018 is one of many recent political changes amidst ongoing global debates about the role of reproductive freedom in modern societies. This dissertation follows these changes through both clandestine and highly public social movement activism, deliberative and legislative political processes, and dynamic shifts in medical service provision over a three-year period from 2017 to 2020. I center the abortion pill as a medical and pharmaceutical technology that has been under-examined by scholars as an agent of change in the story of Ireland’s abortion debates. The emergence of non- profit …

Building The Revolution: Ideology, Affect And Gender In Bolivarian Caracas, Andreina I. Torres A.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Building the Revolution: Ideology, Affect and Gender in Bolivarian Caracas,” examines the Bolivarian Revolution (1998-present) as a heterogenous shifting political process, and terrain of struggle in which a multiplicity of actors disputed the meanings and direction of socialism in Venezuela. During three years of ethnographic and archival research in Caracas (between 2014 and 2017) I researched one of the many Campamentos de Pioneros (Pioneer Camps) that was part of the Movimiento de Pobladores y Pobladoras de Venezuela (Venezuela’s Settlers’ Movement). The pioneers sought to “rescue” and occupy centrally located land in the national capital in order to build housing for …

Brave New Wombs: Hysterectomy, Gender, And Stratified Reproduction, Andréa Becker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hysterectomy is the most common gynecological surgery worldwide and approximately one third of people assigned female at birth in the U.S. will have their uterus removed by the age of 65. Despite the high prevalence, sociologists have neglected to examine this procedure amid broader systems of gender, health, and race inequality. Over 90% of hysterectomies are deemed “elective,” including for chronic reproductive illness or as gender affirming care for trans and nonbinary individuals. Given the various reasons for a hysterectomy, and the incidence of this procedure across gender identities, an analysis of hysterectomy experiences allows for a rich investigation into …

Time And Power: The Will To Temporalize In Digital Culture, Talha Issevenler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I analyze the new forms of temporalization of social media in relationship to arrangements of power through nonhuman agency of the algorithm. The new social media industry refers to the entities that make up its circulatory movement, simply as ‘content’. This suggests that scientific or empirical study of social media should deal with content and analyze this as the data of research through sampling (Manovich, 2020, p. 93-94). Yet the forms and the temporality in which the content is presented not only are open to empirical research but should be central to our understanding of the organization …

Pushing Understanding: Curriculum Resources For Digital Pedagogues, M. Rubin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Whether one wishes to admit it or not, the classroom is a distinct and separate space from the rest of the world with its own rules, expectations, and environment. Even when a class takes place outside of a classroom, the space takes on the role of a classroom, if not outright becoming a classroom in every form aside from shape. This is not unlike, for instance, a tabletop game: even if not played on a literal tabletop, a tabletop game remains identifiable as such, and its rules and expectations remain the same, as does even its environment. A course may …

Diversity As A Condition Of Cultures: Querying Assumptions Of Mainstream And Minorities In Education Policy And Curriculum, Sue Saltmarsh

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Highlights

• Discussions of diversity in relation to children’s education are often characterized by binaries of same/different, mainstream/margins, inclusion/exclusion, self/Other.

• Curriculum remains a contested site in educational debate, with differing views about curriculum as reinforcing social norms, beliefs, and values, as addressing the learning and social needs of learners from a variety of backgrounds and worldviews, or as a hybrid of these.

• Policy and curriculum designed or intended to address diversity tend to rest on assumptions of majority or dominant cultures as homogenous and distinct from the cultures of minority Other/s.

• Inequality is often multidimensional, intersecting with, …

Women And Brains Go Together: Mapping Sophia Kovalevsky’S Animus In Alice Munro’S ‘Too Much Happiness’., Suparna Karkun, Anoop Kumar Tiwari

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women and brains have always been an epicentre of intrigue and controversy delineating that women must use brains in dimensions that have been predestined for them by misogynists. An intelligent woman is often marginalized as unfeminine and hoydenish capable of threatening the heteropatriarchy thereby rendering it impotent. Several pioneering works on gender identity and equality began to be written in the eighteen and nineteenth century drawing attention of the intelligentsia as well as the common folk equally, towards this burning issue. Feminist reforms were initiated as a result of the untiring endeavour of writers and critics throughout the world. The …

Decoding The Internet Trolls And Their Implications On Female Youtubers, Tanaya Salian, Munmun Ghosh

Journal of International Women's Studies

YouTube was one of the first platforms fuelling every layperson's dream to get a taste of stardom. Standing true to its promise, it exposed everyone to content creation and every aspect of fame that comes with content creation. The good, the bad, and the ugly side of the online platform involve the trolls and hate comments on the online platforms. It was eventually noticed that the trolling phenomena are shaping up biasedly and follow gender inequality recently. The online trolls are severe and ugly, especially for female content creators. The comments were harsh, demeaning and sometimes vindictive. Looking at this …

Lack Of Data And Dialogue On Female Genital Mutilation In Pakistan, Huda Syyed

Journal of International Women's Studies

Female genital mutilation (FGM) affects women in many countries and carries significant socio-sexual and cultural implications such as affected female sexual pleasure and a strong association with traditions which are believed to form a cultural identity. This essay explored the lack of data and discourse regarding this practice among the Dawoodi Bohra community in Pakistan. Due to the Pakistani government’s lack of recognition and public dialogue on this issue, there remains no official laws, statistics, or empirical research about the ritual. Despite the rise of feminism and women’s empowerment in many contemporary societies, Pakistan has not initiated any FGM debate …

Social Construction Of Female Infertility: A Qualitative Study Of Women With Female Factor Infertility Diagnosis, Oluwakemi Shade Iwelumor, Shariffah Suraya Syed Jamaludin, Kunle Seun Babatunde

Journal of International Women's Studies

Infertility, though a global reproductive problem, is uniquely constructed within different socio-cultural contexts. This study explored the social construction of the meaning of infertility among women by focusing on a sample of married women with female factor infertility diagnoses experiencing primary infertility in Kwara South, Nigeria. The study adopted a qualitative approach. Nine women were recruited through the snowball sampling technique. Data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis with Atlas.ti 8. The findings are presented in three themes: ‘when delay becomes a problem,’ ‘confirming suspicion,’ and ‘defining the situation.’ By exploring the perceptions of infertile …

From Housewives And Mothers To Mules: The Case Of Latin American Women Prisoners In Spain, Joaquina Castillo-Algarra, Marta Ruiz-García

Journal of International Women's Studies

Latin American women play a key role in the international cocaine business as couriers or mules. Beginning from theoretical perspectives that explain the relationship between criminality and gender, we analyze why women without a criminal background become criminals, how they become involved in trafficking, their positions and functions in the criminal organization, and the risks and benefits of their participation. Qualitative fieldwork was carried out based on in-depth interviews with fifty-one female inmates and twenty members of prison staff from nine Spanish prisons. A thematic analysis has been carried out based on this data. The results reveal that the prevalent …

Folk Song “Hua’Er” In Northwest China: “Younger Sisters” And The Gender Relationship, Ma Rui

Journal of International Women's Studies

Chinese folk songs remain largely unheard-of outside China. The broad purpose of this essay is to bring one peculiar form of folk songs that is commonly circulated in Northwest China—Hua’er—into the spotlight. The essay attempts to reveal four types of female images as observed in romantic Hua’er, which is followed by an analysis of the gender relationship mirrored from the images and characterized by male-dominated hierarchy. Additionally, two ideas are offered as interpretation on the construction of the gender hierarchy. One is the impacts of Islam and Tibetan Buddhism which are two principal religions in Northwest China; the other is …