Digital Commons Network^™

How The Middle Class Exists (In Academic Literature): A Semantic Analysis, Sophie Mars

CMC Senior Theses

As there is no definition for the term “middle class” in development studies literature, academics create ad hoc and/or arbitrary definitions. Authors may define the middle class themselves according to the purpose of their analysis, clarify that no singular definition exists, and assert that a singular definition need not matter. Other authors may not define the middle class at all, leaving readers to infer its conceptualization. This thesis proposes that, despite ad hoc, arbitrary, and implied definitions for the middle class, academics across disciplines conceptualize the middle class using three approaches with transdisciplinary application: the vulnerability, capability, and aspirations approaches. …

Prosecuting Rape As Genocide: An Analysis Of The Legal Framework And Challenges In International Law, Anya Syed

CMC Senior Theses

Rape can be used to annihilate, control, and humiliate populations. Mass rape can have genocidal intent. Yet, thus far, the legal definition of genocide has failed to codify rape. These severe limitations in the definition of genocide create legal impunity and impede the rehabilitation of rape survivors. This failure also results in legal challenges, including the lack of basis to distinguish between rape during war and genocide. This paper seeks to provide readers with sufficient background to understand the legal challenges currently preventing the prosecution of rape as genocide. After presenting this information, the paper details past courts that have …

Challenges Of Nutrition In Malaysia: Poverty, Land Appropriation, And Indigeneity, Jeanie Kim

CMC Senior Theses

Malnutrition, especially in the form of wasting, stunting, and obesity, is disproportionately harming the Indigenous communities in Malaysia. Under the current legal system, Indigenous people receive little to no recognition and protection. Their land is often appropriated by the oil palm and dam industries, resulting in higher incidences of malnutrition and poverty. In order to improve the nutritional status of Malaysia as a whole, potential policies and programs include food fortification, crop diversification, and social safety nets. For the most marginalized communities, indigeneity and land restitution are analyzed as avenues to improve their livelihood.

Shaping Knowledge With Distortions: Museums As Oppressive Spaces And Hermeneutical Injustice, Fangzhangyi Chen

CMC Senior Theses

Museums are places where people come to make sense of their and others’ social experiences related to social identities. However, what if museums present a distorted picture containing prejudicial stereotypes that harm socially marginalized groups? In this thesis, I argue that museums are oppressive spaces that reinforce hermeneutical injustice as distorted hermeneutical resources shaped by the socially powerful to sustain the asymmetrical social dynamics at large. The primary objective of the thesis is to contribute to the existing literature of museums being oppressive spaces by offering a novel explanation utilizing Miranda Fricker’s framework of hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice arises when …

Kantian Self-Government And The Role Of Deliberation: Taking Seriously Our Mastery Of Ourselves, Sarah Grace Simionas

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis works to unpack the ideal state government put forward in Kant’s political philosophy. Looking at the work of Arthur Ripstein, Helga Varden, Corey Brettschneider, and Iris Young, I will argue that the ideal Kantian government involves all citizens participating in their own self-governance through democracy. Within this democracy, Kant’s definition of individual freedom and requirements for active citizenship act as the procedural and substantive guidance and constraints for the procedures and outcomes of self-rule. Kant’s principles of individual freedom therefore need to be codified into a constitution that citizens can appeal to as both authors and addressees of …

Identifying The Main Causes For Support Of Crime Control Theater Forms, And Understanding How To Correct The Public’S Perception, Erisjames M. Elliott

CMC Senior Theses

Much research has been completed on the forms of crime control theater (CCT), and the impact that the existence of CCT laws have on society. Research on CCT laws has shown that they are definitively unsuccessful in providing the safety they were created to provide. This thesis will utilize completed research to explain the main psychological phenomena holding people back from decreasing their support for CCT laws. It will also describe proven methods of correcting misinformation in order to change the perceptions of people who support crime control theater laws, and provide suggestions for how research should be continued.

Mysteries Of The Gothic, Addison Duvall

CMC Senior Theses

By examining the histories of the Notre-Dame and Chartres cathedrals, I will consider three academic schools of thought regarding the high Gothic Cathedrals: the balanced and rational feat of engineering, the communal and social rituals that bond humans to this space, and the iconographic manifestation of the supernatural. Functionalist engineering paradoxically lays at the heart of these cathedrals' capacity to open the human consciousness to the sacred by using recurrent symbolic patterns from nature, music and mathematics to create divine ratios that transport us. Integrated into these larger architectural designs the repeating visual patterns exalting both biblical and supernatural icons …

The Application Of Interpersonal Concepts To Reframe Instructor Misbehaviors, Jonathan A. Mendoza

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The research literature surrounding instructor misbehaviors has been largely influenced by two typologies of misbehaviors. Kearney et al. (1991) introduced the first typology of instructor misbehaviors, which included incompetence, offensiveness, and indolence. Goodboy and Myers (2015) later revisited this initial typology, finding additional misbehaviors that reflected changes in the classroom climate, including antagonism and misbehaviors enacted during lectures. Much of the research on instructor misbehaviors utilizes these typologies, using a framework of interpersonal theories as a means of understanding instructor misbehaviors. In my review of the literature, common theories applied included expectancy violations theory, communication privacy management theory, and attribution …

Stoic Indulgence, Gratuitous Restraint: White Feelings And Campus Art, Bert Stabler

Faculty Publications – Art

The 2010s saw a revival of reactionary politics on college campuses, which now appear to have paved the way for contemporary right-wing culture-war talking points regarding K–12 education. Revanchist attitudes around race, as well as gender and sexuality, can be linked to White Americans’ affective attachments to ideas of historical entitlement, which can be seen both in campus responses to university art programming and in acts of student vandalism. I describe a campus gallery exhibition I organized in 2016 around the theme of White affect, and I make connections between expressions of rage, anguish, and reasonableness on the part of …

Art Evading Confinement: Abolition As Universal Design, Albert Stabler

Faculty Publications – Art

Universal Design, initially an approach to designing barrier-free architectural spaces for disabled people, has primarily been adapted to schooling through the Universal Design for Learning framework. Contemporary abolitionism is a visionary grassroots movement to make prisons and jails obsolete, which has been brought into education discourse primarily through considering urban public schools as institutions of policing and punishment. By considering these strategies for reforming and ending confinement, respectively, this essay argues for a more expansive understanding of access in education. The argument for their compatibility in arts education is articulated first through reviewing shared aspects of these two approaches, then …

Five Linguistic Methods For Revitalizing Indigenous Laws, Naiomi Walqwan Metallic

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Building on the ground-breaking work on the revitalization of Indigenous laws ongoing over the past decade, this article seeks to contribute to our understanding of how Indigenous languages can be used to recover Indigenous laws. It posits that there is not one single linguistic method, but at least five: 1) the ‘Meta-principle’ method; 2) the ‘Grammar as revealing worldview’ method; 3) the ‘Word-part’ method; 4) the ‘Word-clusters’ method; and 5) the ‘Place names’ method. Using the Mìgmaq language to illustrate, the article explains each method and provides examples of how they can be used to inform Indigenous law revitalization. The …

At Home In The Field, In The Field At Home? Reflections On Power And Fieldwork In Familiar Settings, Arda Bilgen, Anita Fabos

Sustainability and Social Justice

Critical epistemologies and methodologies have over time challenged the static and mono-dimensional approaches to fieldwork, allowing researchers to contemplate and conduct their research in spaces of in-betweenness. Despite this important shift, the essentialist idea that both ‘the field’ and ‘home’ in a fieldwork setting must be actual places persists. In this article, we challenge the conceptualization and operationalization of ‘home’ not only as the juxtaposition to ‘the field’, but also as the embodiment of a place in a specific temporality. We argue that the postulation of ‘home’ as a constant disregards the non-predetermined and unpredictable nature of fieldwork relationships that …

Billionaires’ Row As Intellectual Property: “Intellectualization” Of Real Property In The Ultraluxury Housing Market, Lucas Daniel Cuatrecasas

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Constitution, The Leviathan, And The Common Good, Steven D. Smith

Constitutional Commentary, Vol. 37 and later (2023–present)

No abstract provided.

Using An Interactional Ethnographic Perspective To Explore Insider Perspectives When Working With Previously Archived Records, Michelle Sullivan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Studies in social science fields have examined specific issues in (re)using archived records for qualitative research, though few have focused on the use of private archives in ethnographic research, especially when it comes to foregrounding participant perspectives. In this methodological dissertation I draw on two sets of archived records to demonstrate how an ethnographer can make visible insider knowledge and perspectives when conducting qualitative research with archived records. Utilizing an interactional ethnographic perspective, I construct a dataset for analysis, making my logic visible as I use mapping and transcription, domain and taxonomic analysis, and discourse analysis to foreground insider perspectives …

Undergraduate Bulletin, 2023-2024, Minnesota State University Moorhead

Undergraduate Bulletins (Catalogs)

No abstract provided.

Using The 3-30-300 Rule To Assess Urban Forest Access And Preferences In Florida (United States), Andrew Koeser, Richard Hauer, Michael Andreu, Robert Northrop, Mysha Clarke, John Diaz, Deborah Hilbert, Cecil Konijnendijk, Shawn Landry, Grant Thompson, Rebecca K. Zarger

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Background: Public engagement is needed to make sure urban forestry management efforts align with the values of the public being served. Noting this, we determined current and desired urban forest access of Florida (United States) residents using the criteria from the 3-30-300 rule (i.e., 3 trees visible from home, 30% canopy in neighborhood, and a green space within 300 meters of home). Methods: A survey of 1,716 Florida residents was conducted to assess canopy coverage and green space access. Respondents were then asked if this level of urban forest access was sufficient for their needs. We also asked their perceptions …

The War On Tenure, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

Legislative attacks on faculty tenure are proliferating at an alarming rate. Politicians seeking to abolish or restrict the practice argue that tenure encourages bad behavior and impedes warranted terminations, granting undeserving academics “jobs for life.” But does tenure really facilitate—much less incentivize—such undesirable outcomes? This Article marshals an original and unprecedented dataset of “tenured-terminations” as well as existing social science research to show that the likely answer to both questions is “No.”

Instead, the data suggest that tenure is largely operating as it should: as a form of “just cause” employment where cause for termination is difficult but not impossible …

Can Marketing Transcend Entrenched Gender Biases?, Thinh Nguyen

Marketing Faculty Publications

Through a feminist lens, Maclaran and Chatzidakis (2022) challenge conventional assumptions about gender, emphasizing its performative nature shaped by social practices rather than inherent traits. This commentary extends analyses of key themes such as gender performativity, the male gaze, and subject-object binaries within marketing. It critiques how marketing strategies reinforce existing power imbalances and systemic biases rooted in historical narratives. The writing also reflects on media interpretations of gender issues through films like 'Turning Red' and 'Barbie'. By contextualizing gendered marketing within broader societal frameworks, this writing contributes to ongoing dialogues in media studies, sociology, and gender studies, highlighting the …

Offshore Entanglements, Martin W. Sybblis

Faculty Articles

For decades, scholars have struggled to determine how to deploy laws and legal institutions to spur economic prosperity. But, without knowing which legal rules and institutions to prioritize for a particular social context, the outcomes have been generally unsatisfactory. The case of offshore financial centers provides fresh and compelling new insights into this puzzle. This Article uses the sociological concept of community economic identity (“CEI”) to understand why some offshore financial centers prioritize investments in legal institutions that bolster their offshore finance enterprises while others do not. CEI refers to a community’s shared identity that is linked to a specific …

Deities’ Rights?, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

A brief commotion arose during the hearings for one of twenty-first-century India’s most widely discussed legal disputes, when a dynamic young attorney suggested that deities, too, had constitutional rights. The suggestion was not absurd. Like a human being or a corporation, Hindu temple deities can participate in litigation, incur financial obligations, and own property. There was nothing to suggest, said the attorney, that the same deity who enjoyed many of the rights and obligations accorded to human persons could not also lay claim to some of their constitutional freedoms. The lone justice to consider this claim blandly and briefly observed …

Contract Law Should Be Faith Neutral: Reverse Entanglement Would Be Stranglement For Religious Arbitration, Michael J. Broyde, Alexa J. Windsor

Faculty Articles

The first section of this Article will outline the ways in which communities—religious and other groups, including the LGBTQ+ community—have used and continue to use private law to achieve meaningful dispute resolution. By diminishing the role of civil courts to review arbitrations, parties may tailor their resolutions to prioritize community values that may be misaligned with secular society. Outside of historical religious usage, private law offers a field ripe for jurisprudential growth. Through alternative dispute resolution, affinity-based minority groups can pave an avenue towards justice which accurately reflects the unique values of their lived experiences.

The second section will provide …

การออกแบบแกนดามกระดูกต้นขาชนิดยาวที่เหมาะสำหรับคนไทย ด้วยหลักการออกแบบหารูปร่างที่เหมาะสมที่สุด, ดวงกมล สายะบุตร

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

การรักษากระดูกต้นขาหักมักใช้วิธีผ่าตัดใส่แกนดามกระดูก โดยแกนดามกระดูกที่ใช้ในปัจจุบันถูกออกแบบโดยอิงจากกายวิภาคของชาวคอเคเชียน ซึ่งไม่เหมาะสมสำหรับประชากรชาวเอเชียเนื่องจากความโค้งของโพรงกระดูกไม่เหมาะสมกัน ซึ่งอาจนำไปสู่การทะลุของปลายแกนดามกระดูกได้ งานวิจัยนี้จะนำวิธีการทำ shape optimiztion มาใช้ในการออกแบบแกนดามกระดูกต้นขาชนิดยาวให้เหมาะสมกับกระดูกต้นขาคนไทย โดยจะเลือกกลุ่มตัวอย่างกระดูกต้นขา 10 กระดูกจากกลุ่มประชากรกระดูกต้นขาคนไทย 60 กระดูก โดยเลือกให้ครอบคลุมกลุ่มประชากรกระดูกต้นขาที่มีรูปร่างหลากหลาย โดยใช้วิธีการจัดกลุ่มแบบ k-means clustering แกนดามกระดูกจะถูกทำการ optimize ในกระดูกกลุ่มตัวอย่างทั้ง 10 กระดูกพร้อม ๆ กัน โดยความเค้นที่เกิดในกระดูกทุกชิ้น จะถูกใช้ในการปรับรูปร่างของแกนดามกระดูกดีไซน์ถัดไป ทำวนไปเรื่อย ๆ จนสามารถลดความเค้นในกระดูกทุกชิ้นได้ แกนดามกระดูกที่ออกแบบใหม่นี้ สามารถทำให้ความเค้นที่เกิดขึ้นในกระดูกต้นขาต่ำลงอย่างมีนัยสำคัญ เมื่อเทียบกับแกนดามกระดูกต้นขาในท้องตลาดที่มีรัศมีความโค้ง 1275, 1500, และ 2000 มิลลิเมตร โดยลดลงเฉลี่ย 96.82%, 98.31%, และ 99.15% ตามลำดับ นอกจากนี้ยังทำการทดสอบความแข็งแรงด้วยวิธีไฟไนต์เอลิเมนต์ พบว่าแกนดามกระดูกที่ออกแบบใหม่มีความแข็งแรง สามารถพัฒนาต่อยอดเพื่อไปใช้ในผู้ป่วยจริงได้ในอนาคต

An Integrated Conceptual Framework Linking Attachment Insecurity To Increased Risk For Both Enacting And Experiencing Objectification, Frances C. Calkins, Sarah Gervais, Gemma Sáez, Meredith J. Martin, M. Meghan Davidson, Rebecca L. Brock

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Sexual objectification (i.e., reducing a person to their appearance, body, or sex appeal and functions) is a significant risk factor for negative health outcomes. In the present investigation, we examined multiple manifestations of objectification (i.e., objectification of others, objectification of self, and objectification by others) in an interpersonal context. We merged objectification theory with attachment theory, one of the most prominent theories of close relationships, and propose that sexual objectification can shed light on attachment processes (and vice versa). To bolster this conceptual overlap, we tested this novel, integrated framework across two independent samples of women and men including (a) …

Of Dogs And Bonds, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

In four of Charles Darwin’s classic works (Darwin, 1859, 1868, 1871, 1872), the domestic dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris)¹ featured prominently, offering key examples to illustrate his ideas about evolution, domestication, comparative behavior and cognition, and emotional expression. Darwin held a clear fondness for dogs, and when replying to letters detailing the “sagacity” of dogs, he remarked “I can believe almost anything about them” (Darwin, 2014). Despite the early interest in their behavior and cognition by a number of leading scientists, dogs were rarely subject to serious investigation as a study species for 150 years. …

Genomic Data From Paquimé: Understanding The Cultural And Genetic Ties Of The Site, Meradeth Snow, Michael Seary, Jakob Sedig, Jose Luis Punzo-Diaz

Faculty Publications

Paquimé, located in the Casas Grandes region of Northern Mexico, presents a rich cultural tradition with ties to populations to the South and North. Ancient mitochondrial DNA from Paquime’s occupants has not provided evidence of large-scale in-migration that led to the fluorescence of the site, as some scholars have hypothesized. This paper focuses on nuclear genomes that have been sequenced for 20+ Paquimé individuals, further demonstrating the complexity of the region and of the city. The emerging data (collected with approval from the Mexican Consejo de Arqueología) presents a clearer view both of the population’s genetic relationships with those to …

Socioeconomic Status Under Title Vii: Why Socioeconomic Status Should Be Protected And How Class-Based Discrimination Already Violates The Law, Ember Devaul

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was enacted with a goal to end workplace discrimination. However, many workers still face discrimination today based on factors that were intended to be protected by the statute. This Comment discusses the severity of socioeconomic discrimination and why prohibiting discrimination based on socioeconomic status is important, explores how the addition of socioeconomic status as a protected class under Title VII is supported by both legislative intent and judicial interpretation, and dissects how employers are already opening themselves up to liability under Title VII when they discriminate based on an individual’s socioeconomic status.

Perspectives On Usability Testing With Iot Devices In Technical Communication Courses, David Wright

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

This Article Offers Perspectives on Adopting Smart Home Technology into Usability Testing for Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) Courses. Usability is a Valued Skill for Technical Communicators. However, Usability Testing Methods Have their Problems as Pedagogical Tools. Internet-Of-Things (IoT) Devices and Smart Home Technology (SHT) May Offer Instructors Tools to overcome Some of Those Problems. This Article Details Advantages and Concerns Associated with using SHT for Curricular Usability Testing.

The Body Of Christ And The Law: A Comparative Study Of Romans 7:4 And Galatians 2:19, Dominic Bornand

Dissertations

In Romans and Galatians, Paul refers to a spiritual death to sin (Rom 6:2) and to the law (Rom 7:4; Gal 2:19). As the means of the believer's death to the law, Paul mentions the "body of Christ" in Rom 7:4 and the "law" in Gal 2:19. These verses seem to suggest some sort of relationship between the body of Christ and the law, as well as between the law and sin. The purpose of this study is to determine the type of relationship between the body of Christ and the law, as well as between law and sin. The …

Social Cognitive Processes Explain Bias In Juror Decisions, Jaime J. Castrellon, Shabnam Hakimi, Jacob M. Parelman, Lun Yin, Jonathan R. Law, Jesse A.G. Skene, David A. Ball, Artemis Malekpour, Donald H. Beskind, Neil Vidmar, John M. Pearson, J. H. Pate Skene, R. Mckell Carter

Faculty Scholarship

Jury decisions are among the most consequential social decisions in which bias plays a notable role. While courts take measures to reduce the influence of non-evidentiary factors, jurors may still incorporate biases into their decisions. One common bias, crime-type bias, is the extent to which the perceived strength of a prosecutor’s case depends on the severity of the crime. Moral judgment, affect and social cognition have been proposed as core processes underlying this and other biases. Behavioral evidence alone has been insufficient to distinguish these explanations. To identify the mechanism underlying crime-type bias, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging patterns …