Digital Commons Network^™

Establishing Metric Method’S To Identify Variation In Human Biological Sex Using The Upper And Lower Limb Bones Of Non-Population Specific Samples., Roland P. Sanchez

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sex estimation of human skeletal remains is a facet of the biological profile. The pelvis has been suggested as the best source to accurately predicting the biological sex, but not always available after the recovery of human remains. At times, only long bones of human skeletal remains are recovered for identification. It has been shown that metric measurements using long can accurately predict biological sex. The most common methods use discriminant functions to predict the likelihood an individual falls within a certain population. These studies rely on population specific collections of skeletal remains for increased accuracy. It’s advised to avoid …

The Role Of Organizational Routines In Perpetuating Disparities Among African American Students In Secondary Advanced Academic Programs: A Mixed Methods Study, J. Nichelle Wimbush

Theses and Dissertations

The academic excellence gap, which refers to the disproportionalities of minority groups in advanced academic programs, presents challenges for educational leaders striving to provide access to equitable educational opportunities for all students. This study, guided by Charles Tilly’s opportunity hoarding, examines the systematic underrepresentation of African American students in advanced academic programs. Using a transformative mixed methods design, the researcher analyzes enrollment patterns, the intersectionality of race and gifted identification in K-5, and teacher and leader perceptions of how organizational routines influence student enrollment in advanced academic courses, grades 9-12, in a school district in West Central Georgia. Redacted student …

From Curiosity To Controversy: American Perception Of Japanese Immigrants, 1853-1924, Chloe Elizabeth Curbelo

Theses and Dissertations

In the mid-nineteenth century, as the United States reached the Pacific through westward expansion, Asia emerged as a new stage for commerce and power. Japan, long isolated under the Tokugawa shogunate, became an object of American fascination when forced into relations. While early depictions cast Japan as an exotic yet uncivilized nation in need of Western guidance, Japan’s rapid modernization and the growing number of Japanese immigrants on the West Coast transformed curiosity into anxiety. My paper traces this evolution of perception from 1850 to 1924, arguing that shifting views of Japan and its people reflected America’s ethnocentric notions of …

“Democracy,” Usa, Marc Edelman

Publications and Research

What does it mean to be an effective citizen in a democracy? Answering this question requires unpacking “democracy” and an analysis of institutions that systematically disempower and alienate citizens. This paper briefly examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to understanding democracy and authoritarianism. It scrutinizes U.S. governance institutions and points to democratic deficits and backsliding present even before Trump 1.0 and 2.0. These range from the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to the Federal Communications Commission. All contributed to institutionalizing minority rule and elite capture. Governance institutions failed to deliver what the American people tell opinion pollsters they …

Masc Affect: Affective Masculinity In Video Games Research, Joshua Foust

Media Studies - Open-Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cultural Coordinates Of Credibility And Sticky Scripts: Womaning Versus Lawyering In The Indian Legal System, Bhumika Billa

Socio-Legal Review

Based on a multimodal and empirical analysis, the article presents Indian women (identifying) lawyers’ lived experiences of epistemic injustice at the sites of legal work in Delhi. The analysis brings a painting, a short film, and 15 semi-structured interviews in conversation with each other to understand women lawyers’ shared experiences of being perceived as “less credible,” and the strategies they have been adopting to assert credibility. The theoretical contribution can be captured by three key arguments. First, using Arpita Singh’s painting, ‘My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising, 2005,’ I argue that the Indian legal system has a “sense of” Delhi. …

Occupying All Sides Of The Desk: A Feminist Methodological Approach To Teaching, Research, And Mentoring, David Powers Corwin, Siri Lalukota, Angelica Lovelace, Lindsay Lowry

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article focuses on a curriculum research collaboration among students (high school, undergraduate and graduate) and faculty to create college-level courses that focus on feminist media studies. As a reflection and extension of our work, we tell our polyvocal story of this collaboration while arguing that this work is a feminist methodology that could be used in pedagogical and other academic and public contexts.

Feminist Digital Center: Building An Online Hub For Undergraduate Feminist Scholarship, Julie Shayne, Tessa Denton, Denise Hattwig

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This paper is about The Feminist Digital Center (FDC). We begin by briefly theoretically situating our project in discussions of feminist and open pedagogy, high impact practices, and digital scholarship. Next, we discuss how the FDC came to be, institutionally and digitally, with particular emphasis on the assignments students did to fill the site. We close with why the site matters. We hope readers will attempt some version of this project at your institutions and find value in the model we share.

Death And Inheritance: How Meanings Of Money Are Drawn From Everyday Life, Kendall Coney

Sociology Honors Projects

Probate is a legal process to distribute a deceased person’s assets involving a personal representative who administers the estate on behalf of the deceased. It is uniquely situated in the intersection of a procedurally exhaustive process and the deeply emotional experience of losing a loved one, where legal procedures are imposed on relational contexts. I draw on in-depth interviews with personal representatives from four counties in Minnesota to expose the dissimilar way personal representatives understand the meaning of inheritance money, which in turn influenced how they understood and navigated the probate process. The lack of a clear pattern found in …

Ukrainian Studies On Terrorism: Contemporary Overview And Thematic Classification, Lesia Horodenko, Yevhen Tsymbalenko

Journal of Strategic Security

This article presents the first systematic and reproducible map of Ukrainian academic scholarship on terrorism (2000–2024). It addresses three questions: what directions the field has developed, which methods prevail across periods and disciplines, and where the gaps lie. The central argument is that clarifying the boundary between media terrorism—amplification via media logics—and information terrorism—manipulative information operations—reorients the field under conditions of hybrid warfare. Methods: systematic search of national repositories and journals; mixed-methods content analysis with iterative thematic coding and periodization (pre-2014; 2014–2021; post-2022). Corpus: n=896 publications. Results: a post-2014 surge and a post-2022 consolidation around hybrid warfare strategies, information operations, …

The Classic, Winter 2025, Public Relations

The Classic, 2020-present

Zwemer View: The Legacy of Standout Leaders; Around the Green: Enrollment Goals Shattered; A New Colenbrander; New Corner, New Chapter; A Fresh Name, a Timeless Legacy; On Call; Agape Anthem; Program Evaluator; Perfect PA Pass Rate; Lux Circle; Ideas for Impact; Tanya Vaas: Making Campus Feel Like Home; End Of An Era: Five Retire from NWC; Summer in the Lab; Giving to Northwestern College in 2024-25; In High Demand; Faith at Work: NWC Earns "Best" Again: Classier Classrooms, Team Builder, Servant-Leader, Faithful Historian, Thoughtful Teacher; Among the Region's Best; Standout Alumni; Stimulating Simulators; Endowed Appointment; New Academic Pathways; Best in …

Publications Of The Faculty Of New York Law School 2024-2025, Mendik Library

Bibliographies of Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Sociological Eye 2025, Loyola Marymount University, Sociology Department

The Sociological Eye Student Journal

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Stacy Burns

Editor: Aliza Davis

"The Perfect Storm": Weathering Black Racial Trauma Across The Lifespan And The Impact Of Covid-19, Taryne M. Mingo, Kiauhna Haynes

Adultspan Journal

Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States (DAEUS), who lived in the South prior to 1965 and experienced decades of legalized discrimination, were found to have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Arline Geronimus (1992) coined the term “weathering” to acknowledge the accumulation of racial trauma stored within the body over extended periods of time. The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological study, aligned by the tenets of Critical Race Theory, explores how continuous racial trauma impacted DAEUS citizens’ well-being and trust in the COVID-19 vaccine. Three Group Experiential Themes emerged during this study, all connected with the experiences …

Educational Experiences Of Latinas In Space Exploration: Achievement Motivation And Science Identity Development, Roslyn Soto Sanchez

CGU Theses & Dissertations

For the U.S. to retain a leading role in understanding the solar system and the universe, a diverse and highly skilled STEM workforce is required. This qualitative study of the K-12 and higher education lived experiences of 30 Latinas who have earned STEM degrees and work in space exploration contributes to existing research by (a) offering insight on the types of achievement motivation that drives them to succeed along these challenging academic pathways; (b) providing an understanding of how Latinas in space exploration developed their science identities, and at what point they felt like they belonged as “real” scientists, engineers …

In The Kingdom Of The Thunder Dragon: Happiness, History, And Environment In A Changing Bhutan, Betsy Bolton

English Literature Faculty Works

Landlocked, mountainous, and surrounded by global giants India and China, Bhutan has provided remarkable leadership on both climate action and human happiness, despite its pre-2023 status as a least-developed nation. Bhutan was the first country to be internationally recognized as carbon neutral; it is also the birthplace of “Gross National Happiness” (GNH), a pointed alternative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a means of measuring the success of national policies in promoting citizens’ wellbeing. Yet Bhutan has also been a site of ethnic conflict, with roughly tens of thousands people displaced into refugee camps in the 1990s and eventually resettled …

Designing Your Next Read: How Psychology Shapes The Way We Choose Books, Stephanie M. Xu

ENGS 15.11: Design and Education

Designing Your Next Read invites students to explore the psychology behind everyday choices through the familiar act of picking a book. Using the lens of design psychology, the lesson examines why decision-making often feels overwhelming and how small shifts in perception, environment, and heuristics can make choices easier and more enjoyable. Students engage in interactive exercises, including a book-browsing activity, mini-lectures on choice biases, and a “Book Blurb” exercise, to reveal how heuristics such as availability, affect, and familiarity shape responses.

Through guided discussion and reflection, students connect psychological theories like the paradox of choice and decision paralysis to their …

Qualitative Interview Coding, Caroline M. Moore

ENGS 15.11: Design and Education

This lesson introduces undergraduate students to rigorous thematic analysis as a tool for gaining insights from qualitative interviews. Aimed at students with some familiarity in Design Thinking, it emphasizes the role of interviewing in understanding user experiences and informing human-centered research. This might be the first lesson in a multi-lesson sequence, allowing the next lesson to go deeper into insights of what design researchers gather from their thematic coding. Through a mix of lecture, individual coding, and small-group coding, students learn to distinguish between inductive and deductive coding and apply these methods to sample interviews. The lesson fosters active learning …

Who Gets To Run?, Martine Gulliver

ENGS 15.11: Design and Education

In this lesson, students will explore how jogging—an activity largely perceived as one of most accessible sports—has historically excluded Black Americans. By analyzing 1) historical maps from major jogging hubs and 2) historical & contemporary running media, students will uncover how discriminatory housing policies and lack of mainstream media representation worked in tandem to create structural obstacles within a supposedly inclusive space. Students will connect this idea of running as a ‘white’ activity to modern-day perceptions of Black runners and instances of racial violence. Beyond the knowledge itself, students should walk away from this lesson with confidence and motivation to …

When Dollar General Comes To Town, Benjamin Williams

ENGS 15.11: Design and Education

Since 2008, Dollar General has grown from 8,222 to 18,130 locations, becoming a staple of rural communities across America. These discount stores have had, and continue to have, a widespread impact on these communities. This lesson aims to inform students of these impacts, while also addressing how towns are responding to the entrance of Dollar Generals. The lesson will equip students to consider the different perspectives involved in this trend. Key concepts that will be discussed include food deserts, rural transportation difficulties, labor costs, and pricing competition.

Demonstrating Deservingness In College Tuition Crowdfunding Campaigns, Siqi Han

Journal of Student Financial Aid

College tuition creates a substantial financial burden for students and families in the United States. Exhausting their own financial resources to pay for their college tuition, some students seek to crowdfund their tuition – a new channel for higher education finance that may become more prevalent in the future. Distinctively, crowdfunding campaigns are not reviewed or approved in the same way as traditional funding applications, leaving space for students’ own justification for deservingness. This paper identifies the embedded semantic features in online college tuition campaigns that raised more money than the rest on a major crowdfunding platform and derives the …

The Silent Cycle Of Violence: The Consequences Of Forced Return Migration And Strategies For Sustainable Reintegration, Guadalupe Loza-Mendez

CMC Senior Theses

The consequences of weaponizing deportations reshape human security in countries receiving high levels of forcibly returned migrants. Through a comparative case study, this thesis examines how different forms of organized crime — cartels in México and gangs in El Salvador — interact with and capitalize on returnee populations. While the origins and manifestations of organized crime differ between México and El Salvador, both demonstrate clear linkages between forced return migration from destination countries and declining human security in countries of origin through three key mechanisms: imported criminal structures, targeted recruitment of vulnerable returnees, and trickle-down effects on local communities.

Many …

Pols 3014w Research Strategies In Public Policy, Sevdenur Koru

Open Educational Resources

Anthropological, psychological, political, social, and economic arguments and knowledge frequently depend on the use of numerical data. An anthropologist might examine how population differences in genes explain population differences in health outcomes; a psychologist might hypothesize that I.Q. is attributable to environmental or genetic factors; a politician might claim that handgun control legislation will reduce crime; a sociologist might assert that social mobility is more limited in the United States than in other countries, and an economist might declare that globalization lowers the incomes of U.S. workers. How can we evaluate these issues and arguments? Using examples from anthropology, psychology, …

Between Belief Belonging: Filipino Atheists’ Lived Experiences Of Cultural Negotiation, Prince Kennex R. Aldama

Journal Article

This study explores the lived experiences of Filipino atheists and how they negotiate traditional Filipino values in a predominantly religious society. Using a phenomenological thematic analysis, it draws on in-depth semi-structured interviews with seven self-identified Filipino atheists. The study examines how participants interpret and navigate values such as pakikisama (smooth interpersonal relations), utang na loob (debt of gratitude), hiya (propriety or shame), and kapwa (shared identity). Findings show that Filipino atheists do not reject these values outright but reinterpret them through secular moral frameworks grounded in empathy, responsibility, and relational care. Participants maintain social belonging through selective disclosure, pragmatic accommodation, …

Documenting The Effects Of Laboratory Sorting In Zooarchaeology: Lessons Learned From The Čḯxwicən Project, Kristine Bovy, Virginia L. Butler, Michael A. Etnier, Sarah K. Campbell

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Zooarchaeologists routinely analyze assemblages that were initially sorted into major animal type (birds, mammals, fish, invertebrates) by students or lab technicians with varied backgrounds in zooarchaeology. Sorting errors are probably made in this initial phase, which can affect taxonomic representation and understanding of human–animal relationships. Recent study of the immense faunal assemblage (over 1 million NSP [Number of Specimens]) from Čḯxwicən (45CA523), a 2,700-year-old Lower Elwha Klallam village located on the coast of Washington (USA), allows us to systematically analyze trends in sorting errors. For example, 22.6% of the bird bones included in our sample were initially missorted into other …

Ghosts Of Bilateralism: Collaborative Research On The Afterlives Of A Finnish-Kenyan Water Development Project, Yonatan N. Gez, Claire Médard, Eunice Kamaara, Eric Masese, Carla Bertin, Nathaniel Chimhete, Berenike Eichhorn, Marie-Aude Fouéré, Hellen Githogori, Ilmari Huotari, Raquel Jerobon, Anna-Riikka Kauppinen, Manya Kagan, Mercy Kosgei, Lena Kroeker, Keren Kuenberg, Anselmo Matusse, Munene Mugambi, Lucy W. Mule, George Mutalemwa, Francis Ngure, Orlando Nipassa, Samuel Owiwa, Stephen Nyagaya, Manuel João Manuel, Elisabeth Schubinger, Ali Umulkher, Esther Wahome

Education and Child Study: Faculty Publications

With rising academic interest in heterodox perspectives on international development interventions, including their unintended consequences and so-called “afterlives” (Rudnyckyj and Schwittay 2014; McKay 2012; Gez 2021), identifying suitable research approaches to capture such complex aftermaths emerges as a new challenge for development studies. In what follows, we share insights from our attempt to adapt an existing research approach to generate evidence on development’s afterlives, including the cascading and unintended effects of past development projects, both tangible and intangible.1 In particular, we explore the valence of qualitative-ethnographic methods for diving deeply into the plurality of projects’ lasting legacies, well beyond …

The Sociopolitical Manifestation Of Built Environment In Rural Thailand : Holistic Development For An Aging Society?, Sirima Thongsawang, Ampa Kaewkumkong

NAKHARA (Journal of Environmental Design and Planning)

Changes in demographic structures in an aging society have diminished farming employment and incomes of old residents of Talat Mai subdistrict, Angthong Province, Thailand. Under decentralization, the local government assumes primary development responsibility in managing the basic needs of citizens. This case study demonstrates how the local government uses the built environment—Wiset Chai Chan Historical Park Royalty Monument —as an instrument for community development to enhance life quality for old residents. This study examines ways in which the park's construction as a built environment are shaped and consequences due to community development as an aging society. Data was gathered by …

Sexual And Reproductive Health Access Among Racial/Ethnic Minority College Students, Srithanvi Pasunuri

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is critical for individual well-being, yet significant disparities in access persist among racial and ethnic minority college students in the United States. These inequities, driven by systemic barriers such as financial constraints, cultural stigmas, and inadequate campus resources, contribute to higher rates of unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and poor health outcomes within these populations. This systematic review aims to identify and synthesize existing literature on the barriers to SRH access for racial and ethnic minority college students, explore how cultural, social, and institutional factors influence service utilization, and assess interventions proven effective in …

Why Are Children's Health Outcomes Different In Counties Across The United States?, Caylen Pavlicek

Res Publica - Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper explores the relationship between family income and health outcomes for children across counties in the United States, focusing on low birth weight as a key indicator. Income disparities among counties often correlate with varying health outcomes for children, particularly those born into lower-income families who lack the resources for adequate healthcare. Utilizing data from 3,113 counties, I examine the impact of income, education, rural versus urban location, healthcare access, and other social determinants on children's health, with a specific focus on birth weight. The findings reveal a strong negative correlation between median household income and low birth weight, …

How Much Does America Hate Black Women?, Franchesca Smith

Res Publica - Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper explores the relationship between sociocultural factors and intersectionality by way of economic inequalities. Intersectionality is a phenomenon that receives little to no examination especially in regards to Black women. The following research uses the theories of intersectionality, human capital, and institutional to examine which has the most significant effect on the wages of Black women compared to other demographics. Findings suggest that the intersectionality of Black women does have a substantial wage gap, but the correlation is positive, which is not true for the variables Black and women when separated. Additionally, the research suggests that the human capital …