Digital Commons Network^™

“We Must Have Jobs!”: The Uaw, Full Employment, And The Drive For Industrial Democracy, Aidan Traverse

History Honors Theses

Fewer times in American history have been more bleak than the Great Depression. Unemployment rates as high as 20%; people waiting for hours in breadlines to get food for themselves and their families; thousands of Americans living in ramshackle “Hoovervilles.” In the midst of this calamity, the United Auto Workers of America (UAW) proposes full employment economics—a fundamental transformation of American society which would guarantee every American a job. And yet, despite full employment’s popularity in all corners of the US, the policy, somewhat paradoxically, fails. This thesis seeks to explore why.

Satire And Sentiment: Dickensian Characterization In Hard Times, Helen R. Ball

The Confluence

Readers of Charles Dickens both celebrate and criticize his characters, who are paramount among the quintessential aspects of his writing. His industrial novel Hard Times bears particularly the weight of such criticism in its portrayal of Stephen Blackpool, one of the Coketown factory Hands. Scholars have complained that Blackpool exemplifies, in too boring or didactic a manner, the typical virtues of the Victorian era, such as saintliness, humility, and long-suffering (Spector 365), and that his character lacks the necessary traits to compel and inspire readers.

Such a critique has prompted the following research and analysis. Using formalist observation of diction …

The Politics Of Literature In Dider Eribon’S Returning To Reims: An Emancipatory Review, Noa De Kievit

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This paper examines Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims (2009) as a model for understanding how literary and autobiographical writing can enact ''the politics of literature.'' While Eribon is widely recognized as a sociologist, his “autosociobiography”—tracing his trajectory from a working-class upbringing to an academic career alongside his coming out—blends personal narrative and sociological insight to illuminate structural inequalities and social marginalization. Reading the text through Jacques Rancière’s concept of the politics of literature, I argue that Eribon simultaneously expands the scope of what is visible, sayable, and thinkable, while reflecting critically on the interpretive authority he exercises. Building on Caroline …

Psychosocial Predictors Of Depression And Anxiety In Thai Stroke Caregivers, Chanatip Tongyonk, Sorawit Wainipitapong, Chavit Tunvirachaisakul, Aurauma Chutinet, Michael Maes, Thitiporn Supasitthumrong

Chulalongkorn Medical Journal

Background: Caregivers of stroke survivors often face significant psychological challenges, yet limited research in Thailand has explored how patient and caregiver characteristics jointly influence caregiver mental health outcomes.

Objective: To identify characteristics of ischemic stroke patients and their caregivers that may predict distress, sadness, and anxiety symptoms in the caregivers.

Method: To measure caregivers' burden, stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Zarit Burden Interview (22-item ZBI), and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) were utilized. To define a multi-step mediation model, we used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

Result: 97 stroke patients and their …

Male Pelvic Health In Saudi Arabia: Knowledge–Practice Gap In Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises And Implications For Preventive Physiotherapy And Health Policy, Wael A. S. Alghamdi

Saudi Medical Journal

No abstract provided.

From Early Adversity To Adult Health: Quality-Of-Life Consequences In A Mental Illness In Saudi Arabia, Rawan Saad Alghamdi, Ahmad A. Mirza, Ibrahim Fae Asiri, Fatemah Samir Alghamdi, Nawaf Abdulaziz Alharthi, Shaymaa A. Abdalal, Iman K. Ramadan

Saudi Medical Journal

Objectives: Childhood trauma (CT) is prevalent among bipolar disorder (BD) patients and exacerbates clinical outcomes, which may impact the quality of life (QoL). This study explores the prevalence of CT and its association with QoL among BD patients in Saudi Arabia. Methods: Cross-sectional study conducted among adults with BD during the euthymic phase. Sample size was estimated using a single-proportion approach (target n=141), and participants recruited by convenience sampling of eligible outpatients. CT was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), and QoL using the the Brief Quality of Life in Bipolar Disorder (Brief QoL.BD). Results: The CT prevalence was …

Perception Verbs, Light Verbs, And Aspect In Modern Standard Arabic, Jaber Ahmed Harthi

UB Journal for Humanities

This paper investigates the interaction between lexical aspect and viewpoint aspect in perception verbs in Modern Standard Arabic, with a particular focus on the role of light verb constructions in shaping aspectual interpretation. Adopting Viberg’s (1983) typology and a two‑component model of aspect (Comrie 1976; Smith 1997), the study classifies core perception verbs as activity, experiential stative, or copulative stative and examines how their situation types combine with perfective and imperfective morphology. The data consist of constructed Modern Standard Arabic examples checked with native speakers. The analysis shows that activity perception verbs are generally dynamic, durative, and atelic, while experiential …

Linguistic Analysis Of Translating Food Product Labels From English To Arabic In Saudi Arabian Market, Majdah M. Aseeri

UB Journal for Humanities

This study examines the interpretations of eight English-Arabic labels for food products available in the Saudi market. The analysis of translations focuses on the translation methods employed within Venuti’s frameworks of domestication and foreignization. The study analyzes explicitly prevalent translation procedures used for food product labels and evaluates their alignment with Venuti’s favored approach of foreignization. Moreover, it examines whether these procedures have resulted in any modification of the original message. This study performs a quantitative analysis that contrasts different aspects. Calculations are performed on the frequencies and percentages of procedures identified to achieve precise statistical outcomes. While transliteration, borrowing, …

Signs Of Belonging: Community Identities Of Deaf Elders In Central And Coastal Massachusetts, Nelia Eaddy

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

This study focuses on shared experiences and themes of community identities within the elder Deaf community of central and coastal Massachusetts. Lived experiences and linguistic journeys shape our overall senses of belonging and identities; subsequently, they profoundly affect our relationship to our communities (Eastaugh, 2019). This research study discusses how concepts of belonging shift as individuals age within their community and how that impacts their sense of belonging and experiences with language. Communities where individuals feel a sense of belonging encourage identity development. The experiences of elders who identify as “Deaf” (due to their language preference and cultural influences) within …

Automatically Constructed Preference Pairs For Chain-Of-Thought: Consistency Gains With Accuracy Tradeoffs, Cameron Scolari, Lanyu Shang

Honors Thesis

We investigate preference optimization over chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning using automatically constructed preference signals derived from the accuracy and internal consistency of a model. Our results show that framing reasoning as a preference learning problem improves both the accuracy of the final answer and the structure of the model outputs. We observe a non-monotonic relationship between performance and the Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) scaling parameter β, where moderate values maximize accuracy while lower values improve stability, highlighting a tradeoff between optimization strength and reliable generation. We further identify a tradeoff between reasoning consistency and accuracy. Increasing the consistency weight improves agreement …

Decolonizing The Home: Anti-Racist Parenting In Asian American Families And Its Effects On Children's Mental Health, Danielle Angela R. Soriano

College Honors Program

Few studies in the field of psychology have investigated how anti-racist and anti-colonial parenting styles are practiced, especially within the Asian American community. The current study aims to investigate how anti-colonial and anti-racist parenting practices are explicitly manifested and their relationship with mental health in Asian American communities. This study concludes by proposing new directions in literature and exploring how anti-colonial approaches can support positive mental health outcomes in children and adolescents. By borrowing questions from the California Department of Education Parent Engagement Module Series and developing new items tailored to our participants’ demographics, we found that the majority (n …

Choosing Play: A Quantitative Case Study On The Impact Of Play-Based Learning Compared To Direct Instruction In An Urban Kindergarten, Deborah Mary Arlauskas

Educational Studies Dissertations

Choosing Play: A Quantitative Case Study on the Impact of Play-Based Learning Compared to Direct Instruction in an Urban Kindergarten examines the academic and behavioral outcomes of kindergarten students in two urban public schools: one implementing a play-based instructional approach grounded in JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) practices, and the other using direct instruction. Rooted in Froebel’s original purpose for kindergarten to nurture the whole child through play, social connection, and interaction with nature, this study returns to the developmental intent behind the creation of kindergarten itself. Standardized literacy performance was measured using the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) …

Completely Abandon Complete Auto: Why Modern Tax Policy Challenges Require Removing The Commerce Clause’S Restrictions On State Taxation, Peter Nielsen

UC Law Business Journal

The Complete Auto four-prong test is the modern analytical framework for courts to analyze whether a state-level tax discriminates against interstate commerce in violation of the Dormant Commerce Clause. The test asks whether (i) the taxpayer has substantial nexus to the taxing state, (ii) the tax is fairly apportioned to reflect the taxpayer’s activities in the state, (iii) the tax discriminates against interstate economic activity in favor of local activity, and (iv) the tax is fairly related to the goods and services provided by the state. The Complete Auto test faces critiques from both judges and scholars for its inconsistent …

Family Quality Of Life And Infant Language Development: A Pilot Study Of Infants Without A History Of Chronic Otitis Media, Aubreigh Cartwright

Dissertations, 2020-current

Chronic otitis media (COM) is a condition associated with hearing fluctuations, recurrent medical interventions, and speech-language concerns. While the audiological impacts for children are well documented, there is less research pertaining to parents’ and caregivers’ experiences. The goal of the overall line of inquiry was to examine the impact of chronic otitis media on parent and caregiver quality of life. Parents and caregivers of ten typically developing infants from six to twelve months of age without COM were administered parent-proxy instruments to determine quality of life, as well as expressive and receptive lexicon. The parents were administered a family intake …

The Culinary History Of Korean Immigrants 1903-2025, Eun Soo Han

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This paper is an exploration into the role that Korean dishes like Kalbi, Korean marinated or grilled meat, and Kimchi, a fermented vegetable or fruit dish played in the development of the Korean Immigrant community and the cultivation of cultural identity of Korean immigrants. This paper offers a brief overview into the history some of the major dishes that forms the core of the three sections of this article with Kalbi being the main theme for the section on Korean immigration to Hawaii in 1903 and Kimchi being the main dish discussed in the second to third section that explores …

A Trinity Of Forces: A Critical Investigation Of The Intersection Of Lived Experience, Jesuit Secondary Education, And Corporate Curricula, Bernhard Bruno Walke

Dissertations

This dissertation examines how students' identities and personal experiences shape their encounters with both Jesuit Secondary Education and the Corporate Work Study Program (CWSP). Throughout this qualitative analysis, the researcher will examine how identity, secondary education, and corporate attitudes coexist, overlap, conflict, intersect, and compete with one another. By employing Gloria Ladsen-Billings’s Critical Race Theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), Dolores Delgado Bernal and Daniel Solórzano’s contributions to Latinx Criticism (Lat Crit), (Solorzano & Bernal, 2001), Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Theory of Intersectionality (K. Crenshaw, 1989), and Tara Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth Model (Yosso, 2005), the researcher will examine how students experience “non-linear …

Justice-Oriented Pedagogy: Personal And Programmatic Commitments In Teacher Education, Cheetara A. Hudson

Dissertations

This qualitative case study examined how faculty in an urban, justice-oriented undergraduate teacher education program prepare elementary teacher candidates to develop socially just and culturally responsive teaching practices. Guided by Critical Race Theory and critical multiculturalism, this study explored how instructors integrated social justice education and culturally responsive pedagogy into coursework and field experiences. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis with four faculty members teaching foundational and methods courses. Thematic analysis revealed four key findings: (a) faculty beliefs and identities, shaped by prior K–12 teaching experiences, strongly influence their pedagogical choices; (b) instructors model justice-oriented …

Predicting Psychosis Through Speech: A Case For Nlp In Clinical Practice, Lydia Britton '27

Student Research

Psychosis is difficult to identify in early stages; however, changes in speech and language offer insights and indicators of emerging symptomatology. This paper examines the potential for Natural Language Processing (NLP) and other computational linguistic techniques for improving the predicition of psychosis disorders through automated analysis of speech. Existing research shows that lingustic markers that are aligned with Formal Thought Disorder, including reduced semantic coherence, poverty of content, tangentiality, reduced syntactic complexity, and pragmatic deficits, can help to distinguish between individuals who are experiencing or at risk for psychosis from healthy controls. Traditional clinical assessments may have difficulty identifying and …

Multilingual Meaning Making In Zambian Social Media Discourse: Rhetorical Framing, Identity Construction, Persuasion And Digital Writing Practices On Facebook, Mwesah Mpundu Kapesa

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This study investigates how language choices in Zambian social media discourse construct identity, frame narratives, and influence audiences. Although major social media platforms are predominantly English and Eurocentric, Zambia is a highly multilingual society, creating tension between global linguistic norms and local language practices. Despite growing scholarship on digital discourse, limited research examines how Zambian users navigate multilingual communication online, particularly regarding identity construction, rhetorical framing, and audience engagement. Using a qualitative research design grounded in discourse analysis and informed by critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) and sociolinguistic theory (Gee, 2014), the study collected two weeks of Facebook data. User‑generated …

How Does Age Affect Our Memory? Semantic Relatedness In Proper Name Recall, Art Beqiraj

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Proper names belong to a distinct class of lexical items that pose challenges for encoding and retrieval across people of all ages. Unlike common nouns, and the exception of nicknames, proper names are arbitrary relative to their referent. Forgetting someone’s name is not only seen as a social faux pas but may be particularly concerning for older adults due to its interpretation as a cognitive decline indicator. Prior research has shown that when names are physically descriptive of their referent (e.g., a giraffe called ‘Lengthy’), they are better learned and recalled; however, the extent to which descriptiveness without a visual …

Teaching "Wh" Questions To Children With Autism Using A Differential Observing Response Procedure, Margaret Piatt

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often demonstrate difficulties responding to “wh” questions (e.g., what, where, who), which are critical for social communication and academic participation. Differential observing responses (DORs) have been shown to improve discrimination learning by increasing attention to relevant stimulus features. The present study evaluated the effects of a DOR procedure using a two-stimulus visual array on the acquisition of intraverbal responding to “wh” questions in a child with ASD.

A multiple baseline across behaviors design was used to assess intervention effects across three response classes: what, where, and who questions. During …

Evaluating The Effects Of Bilingual, Video-Modified Social Story Interventions For Spanish-Speaking Children With Autism And Limited Language Abilities, Benjamin Troyer

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Social Stories ™ are interventions commonly used to target skill deficits or behavior

reduction goals for children with Autism. Most Social Story research has focused on English

speaking children with relatively advanced language abilities, limiting evidence for efficacy

with Spanish-speaking populations with lower language abilities. Some research has

demonstrated that modifying the format of a Social Story to a video format is effective at

extending the effectiveness to populations with lower language abilities. The purpose of

this study was to examine the effects of Bilingual, video-modified Social Stories on skill

acquisition and behavior reduction targets for Spanish-speaking children with ASD …

Temporal Ubiquity, Brittni Mosby

MFA in Visual Art

My thesis examines looking as a sacred and relational practice rooted in familial memory, storytelling, and the photographic archive. Drawing from early experiences of engaging family photographs alongside my mother and great-grandmother, I conceptualize these encounters as the formation of “temporal altars”: living vessels that activate space, memory, and multiplicity. These intimate acts of looking and listening position the home as a critical site where Black subjectivity is held with care and complexity.

By casting these modes of perception into domestic spaces, my thesis not only resists reductive external gazes but interrogates the archive as a colonial apparatus structured by …

Cigarette And E-Cigarette Use In Greater Philadelphia: Proportion Of Use Compared To National Data And Local Predictors Of Smoking Status, Munjireen Sifat, Joshua Banks, Lilianna Phan, Kuang-Yi Wen, Julie A. Barta, Rebecca J. Melillo, Hee-Soon Juon

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

UNLABELLED: Objective tobacco use, cigarette, e-cigarette, cancer-related beliefs, perceived risk, lifestyle attribution, cancer disparities, health equity. We assessed cigarette smoking and e-cigarette use in the Greater Philadelphia region alongside national data. The objectives were to descriptively explore differences in tobacco use by sociodemographic characteristics. We also examined cancer belief associations with smoking and e-cigarette use in the local context.

METHODS: We descriptively compared cross-sectional survey data from 2744 adults in the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center (SKCCC) catchment area (Greater Philadelphia region; May-July 2022) with 6252 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 6) nationally representative respondents (United States; March-November 2022). …

Alive In Translation, Shiyao Fu

MFA in Visual Art

Alive in Translation explores in-between cultural conditions through my process of working with materials metaphorically, focusing on how they interact and intersect. By using paradoxical pairings—organic and synthetic, fluid and rigid, liquid and solid, flux and suspension—my sculptures and installations simultaneously hold multiple conditions. My process is grounded in my own negotiations with materials. By embracing both the material limitations and my own frustrations, I allow the materials to act as active agents in my process of making. The resulting forms exist in between the materials’ own tendencies and my own intentions. My thesis project, We twist, extend, and accrete …

A Kantian Guide To Understanding Agentic Ai And Its Ethical Consequences, Amelia Wang

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

The rapid emergence of Agentic AI, which are systems capable of autonomous, multi-step decision-making with minimal human oversight, has prompted growing discourse and concern regarding whether such systems possess a form of agency comparable to that of human beings, and subsequently, what ethical responsibilities ensue if they do. This thesis argues that many of the ethical risks surrounding Agentic AI stem from a fundamental misconception, which is the tendency to describe these systems using the language of agency ("deciding," "acting," "choosing") without examining whether they satisfy the philosophical conditions for genuine rational agency. Drawing on Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the …

Introduction Of Palestine And Campus Movements: Sites Of Transnational Feminist Solidarities, Besan Jaber, Asmaa Malik

Gatherings

Amid a genocide, Gaza called on the world to witness and to act for justice in Palestine. The world responded. A historic mobilization of global campus movements has emerged, generating far more than public protests. This issue of Gatherings documents and analyzes this moment of transnational solidarity and aims to center the voices and experiences of those who organized, resisted, and refused.

Gatherings 3.1 (Complete Issue), Besan Jaber, Asmaa Malik

Gatherings

Acknowledgement / Besan Jaber and Asmaa Malik, guest co-editors -- p. i: Table of Contents -- p. ii: Editorial Board -- p. 1: Introduction of Palestine and Campus Movements: Sites of Transnational Feminist Solidarities / Besan Jaber and Asmaa Malik, -- p. 10: Introductory Remarks on Gendered Anti-Palestinian Racism and Colonial Solidarities / Wafaa Hasan -- p. 24: Against Genocide: Feminist Dissent, Palestine Solidarity, and the Neoliberal University / Azza Basarudin, Araceli Esparza, and Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson -- p. 46: Confronting the Storm: Dispatches from the Night Watch at the People’s University for Palestine / Leslie Quintanilla -- p. 61: Knock …

Oracles Of Dixie: Southern Divines And The Classicisms Of The Lost Cause, Jack Corp

Madison Historical Review

This paper explores how the Southern Protestant clergy used classical antiquity to sustain the myth of the Lost Cause after the Civil War. By drawing on symbols, heroes, and moral lessons from ancient Greece and Rome, ministers re-framed the South's defeat and reinforced white supremacy. Faced with societal transformation and the collapse of the Confederacy, they employed these classical references to legitimize racial and political identities. Using Slavoj Žižek's critique of ideology, the paper argues that Southern ministers created a social reality through "imaginary identification," fostering a mythical, idealized vision of the past to sustain regional hegemony.

The Shadow Of The Serpent: A Translation And A Critical Reading, Ghada Abdulrazzaq Alkilani

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

This thesis presents a literary translation of Youssef Ziedan's novel The Shadow of the Serpent. Framed through the lenses of the cultural turn in translation studies, Bassnett & Lefevere, and Venuti, with Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, alongside the feminist, postcolonial, and psychoanalytic perspectives. This work presents translation as an act of cultural negotiation and philosophical inquiry. It also contributes a critical reading of the novel's rich historical, cultural, and linguistic dimensions. The author uses dialectical language variation, shifting between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Egyptian Arabic (CEA), which becomes a core position of analysis and challenge. These language choices are …