Digital Commons Network^™

Afrissippi, Peter Muvunyi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Guelel Kumba, a Senegalese Fulani griot, chef, and musician currently residing in Oxford, Mississippi, incorporates West African cuisine and music into his daily life in the South. This profile study asks: How does Kumba's performances and cooking translate Fulani heritage into Mississippi's blues and soul-food scenes? The research employed observation, secondary sources, purposeful semi-structured interviews, and a documentary.

Kumba views tradition as an arsenal, preserving its essential rhythms and flavors while reworking family recipes and tunes to suit local tastes. Customers can eat, listen, and interact their way into shared history at his food truck and …

Annual Report Of Undergraduate Research Fellows From August 2024 To May 2025, Office Of Research And Sponsored Programs. Morehead State University.

Office of Research and Sponsored Programs Reports and Publications

Annual Report of Undergraduate Research Fellows from August 2024 to May 2025.

Students’ Perceptions Of Self And Peers Predict Self-Reports Of Cheating, Amber M. Henslee, Luke Settles, Sara E. Johnson, Gayla R. Olbricht

Psychological Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Academic dishonesty and how to address it are common concerns across higher education disciplines, but engineering students admit to higher rates of academic dishonesty than other students. However, first-year students may be particularly receptive to prevention efforts. Considering self-perception, social norming, and behavioral choice theories, we hypothesized that 1.) Students who perceived themself as ethical and more knowledgeable of the consequences for misconduct would be less likely to self-report cheating and 2.) Students who perceived cheating and plagiarism to be common would be more likely to self-report cheating. For this study, freshmen engineering students (N=703) reported their self-perception, perception of …

Yale Medicine Magazine December 2025, Issue 175, Yale University. School Of Medicine

Yale Medicine Magazine - alumni bulletin and magazine

This is the December 2025 issue of Yale Medicine Magazine, issue 175. Prepared in cooperation with the alumni and development offices at the School of Medicine. Earlier volumes are called Yale School of Medicine alumni bulletins, dating from v.1 (1953) through v.13 (1965) and Yale Medicine: alumni bulletin of the School of Medicine, v.1 (1965) through v. 52, no.1. (Autumn 2017).

Political Disinformation In The Anthropocene, Jeffrey Omari

Washington and Lee Law Review

The Anthropocene is the name that scientists have given to our current geological epoch, which references the overwhelming influence of human agency on the Earth and its ecological systems. Adopted as a theoretical tool across multiple academic disciplines, social scientists often employ the term to address deep-rooted political and socioeconomic problems and the symptoms of global inequalities and injustices. Meanwhile, legal scholars have employed the term to address the global environmental harms of human agency and to examine how normative frameworks must fundamentally change and adapt to the times ahead. At the same time, recent scholarship also notes that democracies …

The Resurgence Of Massive Resistance, Danielle Wingfield

Washington and Lee Law Review

“Massive Resistance” to equal access to good quality public education is resurging across the nation. First employed by segregationists in Virginia, Massive Resistance spread across the South to oppose school desegregation. This extreme push to suppress equitable education occurred most notably post-Brown. Although 2024 marked Brown’s seventieth anniversary, Massive Resistance is again surging. In fact, the last few years have witnessed increasing resistance to publicly funded education. Some areas where anti-public education resistance strategies have manifested include political rhetoric around Critical Race Theory, library censorship, and renewed parental rights debates.

To devise the most effective response to …

Governance And Innovation In Plastic Waste Management: The Case Of Japan, Minoo Tehrani, Yu Cui

Business Faculty Publications

This study investigates plastic waste management, focusing on Japan. The volume of plastic waste in Japan is more than eight million tons, and less than a quarter of the plastic waste is subjected to recycling. Considering that Japan is an archipelago consisting of a combination of four large islands and numerous smaller ones, plastic waste that enters the ocean poses significant threats to marine life, birds, other living beings, and beach pollution. This research explores the underlying factors that have made Japan one of the highest users of plastic. In addition, this study evaluates different strategies that are utilized in …

Barriers To Philanthropy, Emily C. Collins

Graduate Research Papers

Philanthropy is widely regarded as a catalyst for social good, yet significant disparities remain between philanthropic intent and measurable impact. Despite there being more than $550 billion in annual charitable giving in the United States alone, systemic issues such as racial injustice, poverty, and inequality persist, prompting scrutiny of the philanthropic sector's overall effectiveness. This literature review delves into the complexities of the barriers that inhibit philanthropy's ability to create transformational social change. It draws from peer-reviewed literature and practitioner insights in interdisciplinary frameworks. This study examines barriers across three different levels: individual, organizational, and systemic.

On the individual level, …

Psychopathology, Symptomology, And Treatment In Offspring Of Holocaust Survivors: An Integrative Systematic Review, Lauren Grace Escobar

Theses and Dissertations

This systematic review aimed to evaluate the symptomatology, psychopathology, and treatment of offspring of Holocaust survivors (OHS). A comprehensive search was conducted in PsycINFO, PILOTS/PTSD, and Scopus for studies published between 1990 and 2024. Inclusion criteria required peer-reviewed studies, reports, books, literature reviews, and meta-analyses written or translated into English that reported on symptomatology and treatment for OHS. From an initial yield of 2,532 articles, 119 studies met the inclusion criteria. The findings suggest that OHS demonstrate significantly higher levels of symptomatology and psychopathology reported in nine clinical classifications. Psychodynamic treatment was the most commonly found treatment modality for OHS, …

A New Dawn Of Joy: How Joy Is Cultivated Among Black Transgender And Nonbinary Young Adults In Florida, Courtney Marciá Gardner

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

The state of Florida had a record-breaking number of implemented and proposed policies between 2023-2024 that impacted transgender and nonbinary individuals. Black transgender and nonbinary people are particularly impacted by these policies due to the compounded effects of their race and gender identity. Nonetheless, despite the growing literature on Black transgender and nonbinary individuals, a lack of research exists examining positive aspects of intersectional experiences among Black transgender and nonbinary individuals. This qualitative study shifts away from deficit centered frameworks by investigating how Black transgender and nonbinary young adults in Florida cultivate joy in their lives. This study uses a …

Food Insecurity Among University Students And The Barriers To Utilizing Food Assistance Programs During And After Hurricanes Ian And Nicole, Carvis C. Durr

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Background and objectives: Food insecurity (FI) is a pressing concern among university students in the United States. Natural disasters such as hurricanes can exacerbate this issue, particularly for low-income individuals, including university students. Although a range of campus, community, and federal food assistance programs (FAPs) are available, students often face barriers to accessing these resources. However, limited research has explored FI among university students in the context of hurricanes, particularly how students utilize FAPs and the challenges they encounter in accessing them. This dissertation aims to (1) understand the prevalence of FI among students, especially socially vulnerable groups at the …

Hetero-Cisgender Rituals: The Oppression Of Sexual- And Gender-Minoritized People, Bertha A. Ben Khallouq

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Among the groups that experience health inequalities in the United States, sexual- and gender-minoritized people figure prominently. Medical practitioners are tasked with alleviating these health inequalities, and it has been suggested that through the education of new physicians, we can decrease these inequalities. This perspective, however, neglects that medical students are social actors and their socialization begins long before medical school. In the present study, I develop a framework for understanding hetero-cisgender rituals that medical students experience and participate in before starting their medical training. I answer three research questions: (1) To what extent do medical students witness hetero-cisgender rituals? …

The Sociological Engagement In John Coltrane's A Love Supreme: Examining The Impacts Of Race, Music, And Culture In Video-Based Learning Amongst College Students, Kinyel K. Ragland Sr.

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

This project consists primarily of the interest in Video Based Learning (VBL) and understanding the impacts of a video based on the connections between John Coltrane’s song Acknowledgement on the Jazz suite A Love Supreme to the Civil Rights movement and systemic racism. Research confirms that VBL has an impact on student learning, yet this project finds that because of the content of the video, it fits into scholarship where there are gaps. The methodological approach, which was qualitative, found that students were overall enlightened, entertained, and were interested in learning more. Other findings include suggestions and recommendations for future …

Queer And Thriving: Community As Resilience In An Anti-Lgbtq State, Lauren Aitken

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people are subject to unique, chronic, and socially based stressors known as minority stressors. Community can be an important resource for LGBTQ people which can help mitigate the harmful effects of minority stressors. This study sought to understand how minority stressors, such as institutionalized forms of prejudice, discrimination, and violence, affect LGBTQ people in Central Florida and how community connectedness can be used as a resource to mitigate those effects. This study used Central Florida as a research site because of its large LGBTQ population within a state where anti-LGBTQ laws are consistently …

The Rise Of Digital Activism: How Social Media Drives Racial Justice Movements, Angelica Ngoho

A with Honors Projects

Social media has revolutionized racial justice movements by organizing action and amplifying voices.

Recontextualizing Engagement With Data Visualizations In The Context Of The Socio-Ecological, Eva Thanheiser, Laurie Rubel, Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, Courtney Koestler

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We explore how data visualizations (DVs) are representational tools that can be used to narrate certain aspects of a context but silence others. Using multiple DVs allows for contrasting the DVs and likely provides opportunities for critical reading and exploring the entanglement of political and ecological dimensions of an issue. We start by integrating two sets of practices, Notice, Wonder, Feel, Act and Reimagine (NW-FAR) (Kahn, et al., 2022) and critical graph reading, Framing, Formatting, Narrating (FFN) (Rubel, et al., 2021) towards taking a socio-political stance and supporting students to read data visualizations and develop critical data literacy. We look …

Nuance As Praxis For Teaching About Mandated Reporting: Classroom Activities, Grace Pappas, Sam Harrell, Stéphanie Wahab

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

As social work instructors, we have observed students increasingly wanting to engage in critical conversations about mandated reporting. Few resources are available to support instructors in facilitating these conversations. This teaching note offers content and lesson plans for exploring mandated reporting as a moral duty, a harm, an ethical dilemma, and a legal mandate in the classroom. Together, these pedagogical tools can help instructors embrace nuance as a practice for teaching about mandated reporting.

Physicists As Environmental Experts, Rachel Rothschild

Articles

The question of which scientists are qualified to provide expert guidance in legal controversies is a perennial debate among scholars, judges, and lawyers. Scientists who participate in legal disputes can achieve enormous power and influence, not only over the case at hand but over long-term developments in legal doctrine. While these issues arise in many areas of the law, environmental litigation has been a particularly active site of contestations over epistemic authority. Courts have frequently relied on scientists to understand whether the government is justified in regulating pollution and who may be liable for environmental and public health harms.

This …

The Transnationalisation Of Civil Society In East Asia’S War Redress Movement, Timothy Webster

Faculty Scholarship

Transnational human rights litigation is commonly associated with developments in Europe and the Americas during the 1990s. But Asian actors have used legal mobilisation to hold corporate actors to account since at least the 1970s. This chapter charts the first usages of transnational litigation in East Asia’s Word War II redress movement, akin to the Holocaust Restitution movement of the West. Korean and Chinese forced labourers liaised with Japanese attorneys, activists and academics to press compensation claims against Japanese corporations for wartime human rights abuses in Tokyo. Legal mobilisation did not succeed in the traditional sense. Yet, the formation of …

An Analysis Of Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy In The U.S., Hieu Trung Bui, Sandra Eksioglu, Ruben Proano, Sarah Nurre Pinkley

Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reluctance or refusal to get vaccinated, commonly known as Vaccine Hesitancy (VH), poses a significant challenge to COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. Understanding the factors contributing to VH is essential for shaping effective public health strategies. This study proposes a novel framework for combining machine learning with publicly available data to generate a proxy metric that evaluates the dynamics of VH faster than the currently used survey methods. The metric is input to descriptive classification models that analyze a wide array of data, aiming to identify key factors associated with VH at the county level in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic …

Uncovering Spain's Lost Victims: Can The Continuing Crimes Doctrine Expand The Jurisdiction Of The International Criminal Court?, Kaitlyn Booher

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

Throughout Spain’s transition years (1975-1985), the country has maintained an “agreement to forget” and consequently failed to prosecute any perpetrators of crimes during the Franco dictatorship. This Note examines Franco-era forced disappearances in Spain and argues that the ICC has ratione temporis jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute perpetrators under the application of the continuing crimes doctrine, which is consistent with the principle of nullum crimen sine lege. (Abstract from author.)

Graduate Portfolio, Cody Miller

Graduate Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Adverse Childhood Experiences And Chronic Health Conditions In Black Individuals, Emily K. Etringer

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and chronic health conditions among Black individuals of different genders. The study employs quantitative research methods and utilizes secondary data analysis on the 2023 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, including frequency, percent, mean, standard deviation, range, and inferential statistics, such as correlation analyses, independent groups t-tests, ANOVA, and Chi-square tests. This research revealed a statistically significant finding that Black individuals with an ACE score of 4+ have more chronic …

Black Girls In School: The Harmful Effects Of Dehumanization And Disciplinary Inequities, Annika Peterson

Graduate Research Papers

Black girls in the U.S. experience dehumanization through adultification and sexual objectification that impact disciplinary practices in the education system. Adultification stereotypes Black girls as more mature, less innocent, and less in need of protection, which results in harsher disciplinary actions and limited empathy from educators. At the same time, sexual objectification reinforces harmful perceptions of Black girls' sexuality and culpability in their sexual violence victimization. The “Jezebel” and “Angry Black Woman” stereotypes continue to influence how Black girls are perceived as either hypersexual or aggressive. These biases and stereotypes contribute to disproportionate disciplinary measures, particularly subjective infractions like “defiance” …

Investigating Dimensions Of Social Vulnerability To Wildfire: A Case Study Of Western Montana, Ella Brodowski

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Communities across the US are facing increased wildfire risks due in part to historic fire suppression efforts, a warming climate, and an influx of people residing in wildland urban interface (WUI) landscapes. Because of these increasing risks, there have been growing concerns about the social factors that can increase individual and community vulnerability to wildfires. This research adds to the discussion of social vulnerability by examining how people living in a geographic area with heightened wildfire risk think about the ways in which people can be more or less vulnerable to wildfires. Using semi-structured interviews, round table discussions, and field …

Relict Ponderosa Pine Mortality And Fuels Study In The Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana, Usa, Laura K. Schimmel

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Many forests have historically experienced mixed-severity fire regimes that were disrupted during the 20th century due to fire exclusion policy. A stand of relict Pinus ponderosa in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex that burned in 2003, 2011, and 2018 provides a unique case study for investigating the effects of returned fire to the landscape. Many of the trees have fire scars or Indigenous bark-peeling scars, preserving valuable ecological and anthropological history. We sought to determine whether scarred trees were more susceptible to fire damage, if larger trees had greater fire resilience than smaller trees, and if fuel loads have changed …

Land Rematriation: Utilizing The National Register Of Historic Places And Developing Tribal Homeland Territories For The Restoration Of Historic Landscapes And Sovereignty, Robert E. Hazen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Land rematriation and cultural revitalization are crucial to addressing the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism on Indigenous communities, particularly for the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The National Register of Historic Places and federal recognition processes have traditionally marginalized Indigenous practices and land claims, yet, as I argue in this thesis, they hold potential for reappropriation in support of sovereignty and heritage. This thesis argues that integrating Indigenous methodologies, geospatial research, and archival analyses can forge a path toward effective land rematriation efforts. My findings reveal culturally significant sites connected to the historic village of Getegitigaaning, helping …

Barbie Vlogger As Teen Influencer For Little Girls, Brilynn A. Janckila

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Mattel’s YouTube Barbie Vlogs series (2015-2022) targets 6–11-year-old girls with short narratives and prosocial messages addressing their prevalent interests and everyday experiences. While the vlog is clearly an attempt by Mattel to appeal to a market sector that includes both little girls and their Millennial parents, this analysis examines Barbie Vlogger as a social media influencer in order to explore how little girls learn to become older girls through the performance of teenage girlhood as enacted in the Barbie Vlogs. What is Barbie doing in the vlogs to show little girls who a teen girl is and what she …

"An Ancient Vanished Race:" Industrial Mythistory And The Alternative Archaeology Of Lake Superior Copper, Donovan C. Murphy

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis explores how the perspectives, biases, and values of Euro-Americans regarding the copper mining industry have shaped a mythology which centers Lake Superior copper in an imagined pre-Columbian global trade network. Notably, many iterations of this mythology are rooted in a rejection of Indigenous agency in the creation of these sites, ascribing them instead to a ‘vanished race’ which had surely once occupied the region. The core of this thesis is formed around a set of semi-structured interviews with representatives of regional heritage institutions and avocationalists which were conducted with the goal of identifying how and why these stories …

Energy Equity In India’S Renewable Energy Transition: A Policy Design Agenda, Aritra Chakrabarty

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

India’s transition to renewable energy has prioritized large-scale, grid-based electrification, often overlooking energy equity, particularly in rural communities. Many households would benefit more from decentralized solutions than from grid extension, yet current policies neither guarantee equitable access nor address pre-existing social and economic inequalities in energy distribution. This dissertation examines the sensitivity of India’s renewable energy policies to energy equity, with a specific focus on gender equity in rural last-mile connectivity. The study is guided by the fundamental question: How can implementation of solar energy program alleviate the lives of rural communities? Using a mixed-method approach that combines policy …