Digital Commons Network^™

¿Gays, Maricas O Algo Más? La Más Draga’S Queer Performance Of Mexicanidad At The Intersection Of Art, Nationalism, And Popular Entertainment, José E. Valdivia Heredia , '23

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

No abstract provided.

Restructuring Pedagogical Norms In Stem: Towards A Socially And Ethically Conscious Approach To Computer Science Higher Education, Alison Kim , '23

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

No abstract provided.

Jury-Related Errors In Copyright, Zahr K. Said

Articles

Copyright law is surprisingly hard. Copyright does not do what laypeople think it does, nor do its terms mean what laypeople expect. Copyright also possesses systemic indeterminacy about what it protects and the extent of that protection. For laypeople, copyright law is decidedly “user-unfriendly.” Nonetheless, copyright law reserves for lay jurors its most-litigated, most difficult, and most consequential question at trial: whether works are “substantially similar” and thus infringing.

Many have criticized this allocation because in the context of copyright law, juries effectively have the power to expand or contract owners’ rights with little oversight or correction. But blaming the …

Automatic Text Simplification Tools To Provide Reading Assistance For Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing Individuals, Oliver Alonzo

Theses

Automatic Text Simplification (ATS) consists of computing techniques to rewrite text to make it simpler to read and understand, and prior research has explored its use to provide reading assistance to various user groups who may benefit from reading support. Prior literacy research has identified great diversity in literacy skills among DHH adults, and prior computing accessibility research has identified benefits from providing ATS-based reading assistance to other user groups. Thus, while ATS holds promise to benefit DHH adults, little research has investigated the benefits from, interests in and preferences for such technologies among DHH adults. Thus, this work aims …

Maniobres De Resistència Personal, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Quan jo tenia nous anys, els meus pares em van enviar a estudiar a la capital. Havia de quedar en règim d'internat de dilluns a divendres, dia que mon pare venia del poble a recollir-me, normalment cap a les cinc del capvespre, si fa no fa.

Production And Global Dissemination Of Chinese Legal Ideology: Implications For The Study Of Illiberalism, Samuli Seppänen

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

This Article discusses the production and global dissemination of Chinese legal ideology and considers its implications for the study of illiberalism. The leaders and ideologues of the Chinese Communist Party profess an interest in increasing the impact of its social sciences and governance ideology in foreign countries. On its face, this project amounts to an ambitious, even radical, ideological challenge against liberal legal thought. Nevertheless, these attempts can also be seen to highlight various challenges that illiberal regimes face in ideological production and advocacy. First, the domestic priorities of illiberal ideological speech may not support ideological advocacy efforts in foreign …

Stories From The Negative Spaces: United States V. Thind And The Narrative Of (Non)Whiteness, Joy Kanwar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Embedded Coaching On Educational Leader Professional Practice, Heather J. Sanchez

Education Dissertations

School and district leadership is complex work. Educational leaders today are charged with a myriad of responsibilities, ranging from everyday operational duties to strategic development of school improvement plans. Leaders are expected to be experts at everything ranging from transportation to transforming teaching and learning. Gone are the days when a leader was expected to manage the school or district. Today leaders are expected to meet the robust needs of staff, students, and families inclusive of social-emotional needs, academic needs, and physical needs. Today’s leaders are expected to be transformative, to have skills sets that enable them to effectively partner …

Gollum From Medieval Tragedy To Liberal Tragedy In J. R. R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings, Masoud Tadayoni, Mohsen Hanif

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium represents different archetypal myths that constitute a diverse treasury of literary genres. Tragedy in variegated forms also appears in many of his mythological tales and characters. Gollum in The Lord of the Rings experiences a unique instance of tragedy when it is compared with Tolkien’s earlier sketches of the genre. We demonstrate that the character Gollum sustains a twofold type of tragedy that originates from Tolkien’s perception of medieval and modern spirits of thought. Raymond Williams in Modern Tragedy draws upon historical traditions of tragedy to survey different characteristics of “modern tragedy”. According to him, the cornerstones …

After Erasure: Contingency And The Persistence Of Subjectivity, Nathan Deprospo

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines the relationship between contemporary posthumanist discourse in rhetoric and composition and the Hegelian dialectic. My basic premise is that the ethical and philosophical aspirations of posthumanist discourse—embrace otherness, improve social relations, foster inclusivity—are undercut by a persistent conservatism and destructiveness that runs throughout the social body. This is a Hegelian point: one should not treat social ills, such as racism, sexism, or classism, as merely unfortunate, cosmetic side effects of social organizations, but rather as fundamental human tendencies. For Hegel, there is a tendency towards exclusion, towards negating otherness, that is inherent in human subjectivity, and which …

Communicative Kissing With Alien Poetry: New Muses In Neil Gaiman’S “How To Talk To Girls At Parties”, Leanna Ashley Herbert

Theses and Dissertations

The representation of women in the fiction of Neil Gaiman is a topic that seems to obsess scholars, critics, fans, and (likely) the author himself. It is imperative that closer scholarly attention be paid to the figure of the muse, a figure defined in contemporary culture by her representability, as she appears across Gaiman’s works. This thesis traces the evolution of m/Muses or muse-like figures in the fiction of Neil Gaiman, arguing that the short story “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” imagines an empowering evolution for those who are objectified or silenced by the assumption that they are …

Female Infertility And Maternal And Infant Outcomes In South Carolina – The Role Of Insurance Type, Chelsea Mencio Norregaard

Theses and Dissertations

The overall objective of this research study was to examine the association between fertility treatments and maternal and infant birth outcomes, and to understand what role insurance type plays in these associations.

This retrospective statewide cohort study utilized population-based birth certificate data from January 2018 – December 2021in South Carolina, linked to all-payer claims data for outpatient services, inpatient admissions/discharges, and emergency department visits. Key exposure variables included insurance type and fertility treatment, depending on Aim. Key outcomes of interest included fertility treatment (Aim 1); maternal outcomes (Aim 2) including severe maternal morbidity, cesarean delivery without medical indication, elective labor …

Mouth Stuff, Jacob Connor Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the idea of nuance in culturally oversimplified narratives, including fraught paternal relationships, sexual assault and non-consent dynamics, childhood and young adulthood LGBTQ+ experiences, and everyday life and mental health in the climate crisis. Drawing upon the 20^th century tradition of short poetry and minimalism, this thesis attempts to demonstrate the frustration of post-internet media culture’s fixation on providing a complete account of a complex issue in extremely limited linguistic space. This collection narratively demonstrates a night of insomnia, loneliness, and depression from sunset to sunrise as the speaker recalls various memories …

“It Looks Like The Future But Feels Like The Past”: Oral (Hi)Stories Of Appalachia As Covid-19 News Stories, Ashley Reid Mcgraw

Theses and Dissertations

Oral historians have often felt obligated to collect stories during disasters and crises, to preserve recollections of experiences and trauma of those affected. During the onset of COVID-19 in the United States, this surge was certainly present. Appalachia, although its boundaries are contested, has a strong association with oral histories, and thus was the focus of one project in particular: a collaboration with the Blue Ridge Public Radio and the Foxfire Appalachian Heritage Museum to collect, curate, publish, and broadcast oral histories of "local" individuals. But what does it mean to be local, in a region as broad as Appalachia? …

The Impact Of Opendyslexic Font On The Reading Comprehension Of Tier Ii And Tier Iii Reading Intervention Students, William David Whitmire

Theses and Dissertations

This mixed methods action research project measured the effect of OpenDyslexic font on the reading comprehension of MTSS Tier II and Tier III reading intervention students. A review of the literature revealed little research about OpenDyslexic font or its effect on reading comprehension. The study consisted of a 7-week period with 4^th grade Tier II and Tier III reading intervention students using OpenDyslexic font while reviewing previously taught comprehension strategies before end of the year testing. Results show positive growth for Tier II reading intervention students and results were inconclusive for Tier III students.

Identity In Literacy Narratives: Toward Reflexive Pedagogy In First Year Writing, Laiken Elizabeth Harrigan

Theses and Dissertations

An ongoing discussion for composition pedagogues is the relation of individuals’ identities and discourse histories in relation to academic discourses. In this thesis, I argue that academic discourse cannot be entirely separated from personal discourse, as individuals are always in conversation with their discoursal histories and identities. In order to better understand how students perceive their relationships to academic discourse, I analyze how First Year Writing (FYW) students experience the discourse of FYW— where they either intertwine their identities or we see their personal identities collide with the academic space. I used open coding to conduct a textual analysis of …

Planting Rhizomes: Roots And Rhizomes In Maryse Condé’S Traversée De La Mangrove And Calixthe Beyala’S Le Petit Prince De Belleville, Rume Kpadamrophe

Theses and Dissertations

For centuries, migration has played a crucial role in the development of human civilization, with the transplantation of cultures from one region to another shaping identities worldwide. The African diaspora, beginning with the Atlantic Slave Trade, saw the forced transportation of around 12 million Africans across the ocean, resulting in the creation of creole identities in the Antilles. Literature has long reflected the experiences of migrants. In Maryse Condé's Traversée de la Mangrove and Calixthe Beyala's Le Petit Prince de Belleville, the complexity of Antillean and Afro-French identities is explored. This thesis delves into how Condé's work highlights the …

Student Engagement Action Research A Focus On Culturally Relevant Instructional Methods, Amia Dixon

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action study was to determine the impact the use of culturally relevant instructional methods (researcher created term) would have on student achievement and student motivation. The use of culturally relevant teaching methods is rooted in culturally relevant pedagogy first introduced by Gloria Ladson-Billings and culturally responsive teaching practices first introduced by Geneva Gay. The study implemented an intervention cycle that modified the fourth-grade curriculum by differentiating lessons based on learning style, incorporating an “activator” that connects to the students’ culture and builds background knowledge, allowing student choice for instructional text, increasing the use of culturally relevant …

Implementation Of Digital Flashcards To Increase Content-Specific Vocabulary Knowledge And Perceptions Of Motivation And Self-Efficacy In An Eleventh-Grade U.S. History Course: An Action Research Study, Jill Lee Steinmeyer

Theses and Dissertations

Text- and document-dependent courses like high school U.S. History require students to have strong content literacy and vocabulary skills. Traditionally, content-area courses neglect vocabulary skills and those that do address vocabulary often teach words in isolation without context. Students needing more content comprehension skills frequently need more motivation and higher self-efficacy.

Three research questions were used to evaluate the impact of digital flashcards on learning content-specific vocabulary and student perceptions in an eleventh-grade U.S. History course: (a) How and to what extent do digital flashcards affect eleventh-grade U.S. History students’ learning content-specific vocabulary knowledge?; (b) How and to what extent …

Experiencing The Formalness: The Role Of Contextual Cues In Consumers’ Luxury Perception And Lifestyle Preference, Zhenyu Jin

Theses and Dissertations

Formalness, which refers to the sense of seriousness, importance, and significance, is a commonly-encountered experience in consumers’ daily lives and can influence consumer behavior in wide domains. Despite its ubiquitous nature, research on consumer experiences of formalness in marketing settings is limited. This dissertation investigates the sense of formalness in consumer behavior, exploring its antecedents and consequences in sensory marketing, luxury consumption, and consumer lifestyles.

Essay 1 identifies one of the antecedents and consequences of formalness sense by exploring how music used in marketing communications and retail environments can induce a sense of formalness in consumers, which in turn shapes …

“So, The World Isn’T Just Old White Guys?”: Student And Teacher Experiences In A Culturally Relevant Advanced Placement Chemistry Class, Jason Thomas Sox

Theses and Dissertations

This action research case study explores the impact of a culturally and socially diverse Advanced Placement Chemistry curriculum on student and teacher experiences. This study emerged due to my lack of multicultural teaching practices, which limited meaningful connections for students of diverse backgrounds. Once aware of this deficiency, I created four thematic units that blended chemistry content with aspects of culturally relevant pedagogy and social reconstructionism. Surveys, reflection logs, observations, and a focus group interview captured data related to student and teacher experiences throughout the intervention period, which suggest the culturally relevant pedagogy supported students’ understanding of content, increased student …

The Effects Of Feedback And Prior Knowledge On The Processing Of L2 French, Lesley Erin Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The strand of feedback research within the field of Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA) examines the effects of feedback on the development of second language (L2) knowledge and learning behaviors. While findings often make claims about the relationship between feedback and language processing, much of this research has not measured learners’ concurrent responses to feedback. By and large, the effects of feedback have been inferred from test scores collected after feedback is provided, with few studies analyzing how feedback affects L2 learning behaviors in real time (i.e., during a task). Consequently, we know little about how feedback affects language processing. …

Stylistic Variation Of Gullah Geechee Language Practices In Coastal Tourism Contexts, John Kibler Mccullough

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the language practices and ideologies of Gullah Geechee (GG) tour guides in Charleston, South Carolina, particularly analyzing how language stylization is used by tour guides in the construction of personae as intercommunity culture and language brokers. Often, indigenous cultural artifacts are commodified through the setting of the tourism industry for consumption by outsiders; Gullah Geechee, a Sea Island creole language spoken along the southeastern United States coast, is directly affected by this characteristic of tourism. GG has been exposed to rapid de-isolation in the past 80 years; this exposure has brought isolated enclaves of GG communities into …

Increasing Phonemic Awareness In Intellectually Impaired Students By Using Wilson’S Fundations Phonics Program In A Self-Contained Classroom, Theresa Lynne Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to investigate if students who have been identified intellectually disabled are able to gain phonemic awareness by using Wilson’s Fundations in a self-contained setting. Most research has focused on students who are not identified as intellectually disabled. In this mixed method action research study, the students were given a first grade reading fluency test and a first grade word reading test for six weeks as the quantitative data. Both instruments were tested using a two-tail t-test, week one’s results were compared to week six’s results on both tests. All five the participants showed growth over the six …

Preparing In-Service Elementary Teachers To Support English Language Learners: A Qualitative Case Study Of A Job-Embedded Professional Development Using Tpack, Rachel Theresa Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

Nation-wide, the number of English Language Learners (ELL) in our classrooms continues to increase. Twenty percent of students enrolled in California public schools are ELLs, the highest percentage in the nation. With the continuously growing number of ELLs in our classrooms, our mainstream teachers must be prepared to teach content and meet the unique linguistic needs of these students. At Sotomayor Elementary School in the Central Valley of California, 38% of the students enrolled are ELLs. Despite high numbers of ELLs, the district sees minimal evidence of intentional planning for Designated English Language Development (D-ELD), or instruction specifically targeted to …

Language Ideologies In Transgender Communities In The U.S. South, Archie Crowley

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how metalinguistic discussions within transgender communities in South Carolina are shaped by experiences, identities, and ideologies related to intersecting social dimensions, specifically, gender, age, race, and regional identity. Based primarily on 20 ethnographic group and individual interviews with 41 transgender individuals living in South Carolina, as well as over 24 months of participant-observation in two trans organizations, the analysis illustrates how trans South Carolinians simultaneously navigated changing norms of community language use, expectations of regional linguistic practices, and mainstream discussions of trans linguistic affirmation. I draw on these sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological methods to examine how discourses …

Creating A Culturally Inclusive American Literature Classroom, Holly R. Bradshaw

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine what curricular and pedagogical changes connect with diverse high school students in an American literature course. Using a participatory action research approach, I collected qualitative data through interviews, observation, and narratives from a student focus group and myself. Data collection spanned an 18-week semester and involved students of varying racial and cultural backgrounds who identified as male, female, and nonbinary. The 12 focus group members were 11th-grade students at a public high school near Charlotte, North Carolina. The results signified that to increase student agency, teachers should offer diverse texts, pieces written …

Effects Of Choice Reading On Intrinsic Motivation In Underperforming Sixth-Grade Students, Heather M. Henderson

Theses and Dissertations

This single-case study was designed to evaluate the effects of autonomous text choice on reading motivation and reading comprehension in underperforming sixth-grade students. This study was built upon the theoretical framework constructed using self-determination theory, situational expectancy–value theory, and culturally relevant pedagogy. Study participants were asked to read a text of their choice for ten minutes each day. Once a week, study participants were observed during their reading time for off-task behaviors to frame discussions on student engagement with their chosen texts, and every other week during the course of the intervention, participants were provided with an opportunity to give …

Negative Polar Questions And Answers In English And Korean, Keunhyung Park

Theses and Dissertations

The meaning of positive polar questions (PPQs) is relatively straightforward, so the truth conditions of PPQs can be decided easily. In contrast, the meaning of negative polar questions (NPQs) may vary, and simple yes-no answers to NPQs have seemingly unpredictable interpretations. For example, a simple yes answer to a PPQ like ‘Did you have lunch today?’ is easily interpreted as ‘I ate lunch.’ In contrast, the same yes answer to an NPQ like ‘Did you not eat lunch today?’ is not obvious out of context. Why are NPQs more ambiguous than PPQs? Based on our empirical observations of the difference …

Deep Learning Based Fault Diagnosis And Prognosis For Bearing, Guangxing Niu

Theses and Dissertations

Rolling element bearings are critical components in industrial rotating machines. Faults and failures of bearings can cause degradation of machine performance or even a catastrophe. Therefore, it is significant work to perform bearing fault diagnosis and prognosis (FDP) reliably and effectively. Diagnosis aims to detect and estimate the fault state of bearing in real-time. Prognosis aims to conduct a long-term prediction to predict the fault evolution and estimate the remaining useful life (RUL) of the bearing.

Deep learning (DL) based FDP methods have become an important branch of bearing FDP methods due to their powerful capabilities in feature automatic learning, …